Toward the end of June, as Claymore\'s new provisional brigade of Sykes\'s division, Fitz John Porter\'s superb corps d\'armee, neared the designated rendezvous, some particularly dirty veteran regiments, bivouacked along the fields, crowded to the roadside, fairly writhing in their scorn and derision.

"Fresh fish! Oh—h! Fresh fi—sh!" they shouted. "My God, boys, just see them pretty red pants! Mother! Come and look. Oh, papa, what are they? Sa—ay, would you gentlemen kindly tell us poor old sodgers what kind ov a hell ov a, dressmaker cut out them pantalettes? I wish I could go out to play with these nice, perlite little boys? Oh, children! why didn\'t you bring your nursemaids with you?"

The 3rd Zouaves marched past the jeering veterans, grinding their teeth, but making no effort at retort. They knew well enough by this time that any attempt to retort would be worse than useless.

As the head of the column of the 8th Lancers appeared from the West at the forks of the other road, the dingy veterans fairly danced in malicious delight:

"Excuse us," they simpered, kissing their dirty finger-tips to the horsemen, "ex-cuse us, please, but do tell us how you left dear old Fift\' Avenoo. Them rocking hosses need a leetle new paint where they sit down, me lords. Hey, you ain\'t got any old red silk stockings we can use for guidons, have you? Oh, Alonzo darling! curl my hair an\' wet me with expensive cologne!"

Colonel Egerton\'s 20th Dragoons, being in blue and orange, got off easier, though the freshness of their uniforms was tremendously resented; but McDunn\'s 10th Flying Battery, in brand new uniforms, ran the full fierce fire of chaff; the indignant cannoneers were begged to disclose the name of the stage line which had supplied their battery horses; and Arthur Wye, driving the showy swing team of No. 6, Left Section, shouted back in his penetrating voice:

"If you want to know who sells broken-down nags to suckers, it\'s Simon Cameron!—you Dutch-faced, barrel-bellied, Pennsylvania scuts!"

A bull-like bellow of laughter burst from the battery; even Captain McDunn\'s grin neutralised the scowling visage he turned to conceal it. And the fury of the Pennsylvanians knew no bounds; for, from general to drummer boy, the troops of that great State were horribly sensitive to any comment on the Hon. Mr. Cameron\'s horse transactions.

Warren\'s matchless brigade followed; but the 6th Lancers had seen
service and they were not jeered; nor were the 5th and 10th
Zouaves, the 1st Connecticut Heavy Artillery and the Rhode Island
Battery.

Berkley, riding with his troop, bridle loose in both gauntleted hands, lance swinging wide from stirrup and elbow loop, looked to the left and noticed Warren\'s regiments swinging out across the breezy uplands. Half an hour later he saw the 3rd Zouaves enter a wheat field to the left of the road, form on their colour front, unsling knapsacks, and stack arms. McDunn\'s battery found a gap in the fence and followed, the guns bumping and bouncing out over a potato field; and presently Egerton\'s Dragoons turned sharply to the right and entered a cool road that ran along a bushy hollow.

The 8th Lancers kept straight on for five or six hundred yards, until they encountered their regimental quartermaster and camping party. Then they wheeled to the right, passed through a thin belt of shade trees, across a splendid marl drive and a vast unkempt lawn. Beyond this they skirted a typical planter\'s house of the better class, with its white galleries, green blinds, quarters, smoke houses, barns, and outhouses innumerable; and halted, each troop moving to a point a little in the rear of where its horses were to be secured, and forming one rank. The bugles sounded "Dismount!" Eight hundred sun-burned riders set foot to sod, details were made to hold the horses, lances were stacked, picket ropes fixed, shelter tents erected, sabre and bridle hung on the twelve weapons of the troop-carbineers, and the standard carried to Colonel Arran\'s tent.

Directly to the right was a gentle declivity with a clear, rapid stream splashing the bottom grasses. Beyond the stream a low green hill rose, concealing the landscape and the river beyond.

And here, on the breezy meadow slope, Egerton\'s Dragoons went into camp and sent out their fatigue parties and grand guards.

Company and squadron streets were laid out, sinks dug, shelter tents pitched, firewood brought, horses picketed. Twenty paces in front of each pile of tents the kitchens were established; all the regimental cavalry waggons came up promptly and were parked in the rear of the picket line for sick horses; the belated and hated sutler of the 8th Lancers drove hastily in, deaf to the blandishments of veterans along the roadside, who eyed him malevolently and with every desire to work him substantial harm.

Late in the afternoon there was much visiting along the lines and between distant camps; the day was cloudless and perfect; magnolia and china-berry scented the winds which furrowed every grassy hillside; flags fluttered, breezy gusts of bugle music incited the birds to rivalry. Peace and sunshine lay over all, and there was nothing sinister to offend save, far along the horizon, the low, unbroken monotone of cannon, never louder, never lower, steady, dull, interminable; and on the southern horizon a single tall cloud, slanting a trifle to the east, like a silver pillar out of plumb.

Berkley\'s attention was directed to it by a suspicious comrade; they both gazed at it curiously, listening to the low mutter of the cannonade; then Berkley frowned, folded both gauntlets, placed them in his belt, passed his hand over his freshly shaven chin, and, pocketing his cob pipe, sauntered forth to visit and gossip with those he knew in other camps.

"Hello, Burgess," he said humorously; "how are you making out?"

His late valet\'s arm twitched instinctively toward the salute he dared not offer; he glanced stealthily right and left before answering:

"I am doing very well, sir, thank you."

"I told you to cut out the \'sir,\' didn\'t I?"

"Yes, sir—beg pardon——"

Berkley eyed him. "You\'ve got your chance," he said. "Your rank and mine are equal. Do you take pleasure in continually reminding yourself of your recent position of servitude?"

"Sir?—beg pardon——"

"Can\'t you help it? Is it born in you?"

Burgess stood silent, considering, then he lifted his ugly face and looked hard at Berkley.

"I am not ashamed of having served you. I am more comfortable under orders. . . . I liked to dress you up . . . I wish to God it was that way now."

"Don\'t you want your independence?"

"My independence," repeated Burgess, "I had it—more of it when I was looking out for you, sir, than I have now in this damn regiment——"

"Well, what did you enlist for?"

"You\'ve asked me that many times, sir, and I don\'t know. . . . I\'d rather be around, handy like——"

"You\'ll get killed some day, don\'t you know it?"

"No, sir. I guess you\'ll look out for me. You always did."

"How the devil can I prevent one of those big shells from knocking you off your horse!"

Burgess, patient, undisturbed, let the, question go with a slight smile.

"What a jackass you are!" said Berkley irritably; "here\'s a dollar to get some pie. And if you can cheat that cursed sutler, do it!"

He himself purchased two big pies from the sutler after an angry haggle in which he was easily worsted; and he munched away contentedly as he walked toward the lines of the 3rd Zouaves, his spurs and sabre jingling, Burgess following respectfully at heel.

"Hello, Steve!" he called out to a sun-burnt young zouave who was drying his freshly washed turban in the hill breeze. "I always heard you fellows wore infant\'s underclothes, but I never believed it before!"

"That\'s my turban, you idiot!" retorted Stephen, turning red as several of McDunn\'s artillerymen began to laugh. But he came over and shook hands and accepted a big piece of pie without further resentment. "Hello, Burgess," he added.

"How do you do, sir."

"That damned Dutch sutler of ours," commented Berkley, "puts clay in his pie-erust. We\'ll certainly have to fix him before long. How are you, Steve, anyway?"

"Both socks full of tallow; otherwise I\'m feeling fine," said the boy. "Did you hear those dirty Bucktail veterans back there poking fun at us? Well, we never answer \'em nowadays; but the Zouaves are getting fearfully sick of it; and if we don\'t go into battle pretty soon there\'ll be a private war on—" he winked—"with those Pennsylvanians, you bet. And I guess the Lancers will be in it, too."

Berkley cast an evil eye on a pair of Pennsylvania soldiers who had come to see how the Zou-zous made camp; then he shrugged his shoulders, watching Burgess, who had started away to roam hungrily around the sutler\'s camp again.

"After all," he said, "these veterans have a right to jeer at us. They\'ve seen war; and now they know whether they\'ll fight or run away. It\'s more than we know, so far."

"Well, I tell you," said Stephen candidly, "there\'s no chance of my running away. A fellow can\'t skedaddle when his father\'s looking at him. Besides, Phil, I don\'t know how it is, but I\'m not very much afraid, not as much as I thought I\'d be."

Berkley looked at him curiously. "Have you been much under fire?"

"Only that affair at the Blue Bridge—you know yourself how it was. After the first shell had made me rather sick at my stomach I was all right—except that I hated to see father sitting up there on his horse while we were all lying snug in the wheat. . . . How did you feel when the big shells came over?"

"Bad," said Berkley briefly.

"Sick?"

"Worse."

"I don\'t see why you should feel queer, Phil—after that bully thing you did with the escort——"

"Oh, hell!" cut in Berkley savagely, "I\'m sick of hearing about it. If you all knew that I was too scared to realise what I was doing you\'d let up on that episode."

Stephen laughed. "I hope our boys get scared in the same way. . . . Hello, here\'s a friend of yours I believe——"

They turned to encounter Casson, the big dragoon, arm in arm with the artilleryman, Arthur Wye.

"Give us some pie, you son of a gun!" they suggested unceremoniously; and when supplied and munching, they all locked arms and strolled out across the grass toward the hill, where already, dark against the blinding blue, hundreds of idle soldiers had gathered to sit on the turf and stare at the tall cloud on the horizon, or watch the signal officer on the higher hill beyond, seated at his telescope, while, beside him, a soldier swung dirty square flags in the wind,

As they arrived on the crest a quick exclamation escaped them; for there, beyond, mile on mile, lay the armed host of which their regiments were tiny portions.

"Lord!" said Stephen in a low, surprised voice, "did you fellows know that the whole army was near here?"

"Not I," said Berkley, gazing spellbound out across the rolling panorama of river, swamp, woods, and fields. "I don\'t believe it occurs very often, either—the chance to see an entire army all at once, encamped right at your feet. What a lot of people and animals!"

They sat down, cross-legged, enjoying their pie, eyes wandering wonderingly over the magic landscape. Here and there a marquee marked some general\'s headquarters, but except for these there were no tents save shelter tents in sight, and not so many of these, because many divisions had bivouacked, and others were in cantonments where the white cupola of some house glimmered, or the thin spire of a church pierced green trees.

Here and there they noted and pointed out to each other roads over which cavalry moved or long waggon trains crept. Down along the swamps that edged the river they could see soldiers building corduroy, repairing bridges, digging ditches, and, in one spot, erecting a fort.

"Oh, hell," said Casson, whose regiment, dismounted, had served muddy apprenticeship along the York River, "if they\'re going to begin that kind of thing again I\'d rather be at home laying gas pipes on Broadway!"

"What kind of thing?" demanded Stephen.

"That road making, swamp digging—all that fixing up forts for big guns that nobody has a chance to fire because the Johnnies get out just when everything\'s ready to blow \'em into the union again. A—h!" he added in disgust, "didn\'t we have a dose of that at Yorktown and Williamsburg? Why doesn\'t Little Mac start us hell-bent for Richmond and let us catch \'em on the jump?"

For a while, their mouths full of pie, the soldiers, with the exception of Berkley, criticised their commander-in-chief, freely—their corps commanders, and every officer down to their particular corporals. That lasted for ten minutes. Then one and all began comparing these same maligned officers most favourably with other officers of other corps; and they ended, as usual, by endorsing their commander-in-chief with enthusiasm, and by praising every officer under whom they served.

Then they boasted of their individual regiments—all except Berkley—extolling their discipline, their marching, their foraging efficiency, their martyr-like endurance.

"What\'s your Colonel like, anyway?" inquired Casson, turning to
Berkley.

"He\'s a good officer," said the latter indifferently.

"Do you like him?"

"He has—merit."

"Jerusalem!" laughed Wye, "if that isn\'t a kick in the seat of his pants!"

Berkley reddened. "You\'re mistaken, Arthur."

"Didn\'t you tell me at Alexandria that you hated him?"

"I said that—yes. I was disappointed because the Westchester Horse was not attached to John Casson\'s regiment. . . . I don\'t—dislike Colonel Arran."

Berkley was still red; he lay in the grass on his stomach, watching the big cloud pile on the horizon.

"You know," said Casson, "that part of our army stretches as far as that smoke. We\'re the rear-guard."

"Listen to the guns," said Wye, pretending technical familiarity even at that distance. "They\'re big fellows—those Dahlgrens and Columbiads——"

"Oh, bosh!" snapped Casson, "you can\'t tell a howitzer from a rocket!"

Wye sat up, thoroughly offended. "To prove your dense ignorance, you yellow-bellied dragoon, let me ask you a simple question: When a shell is fired toward you can you see it coming?"

"Certainly. Didn\'t we see the big shells at Yorktown——"

"Wait! When a solid shot is fired, can you see it when it is coming toward you?"

"Certainly——"

"No you can\'t, you ignoramus! You can see a shell coming or going; you can see a solid shot going—never coming from the enemy\'s guns. Aw! go soak that bull head of yours and wear a lady-like havelock!"

The bickering discussion became general for a moment, then, still disputing, Casson and Wye walked off toward camp, and Stephen and Berkley followed.

"Have you heard from your mother?" asked the latter, as they sauntered along over the grass.

"Yes, twice. Father was worried half to death because she hadn\'t yet left Paigecourt. Isn\'t it strange, Phil, that after all we\'re so near mother\'s old home? And father was all against her going, I tell you, I\'m worried."

"She has probably gone by this time," observed Berkley.

The boy nodded doubtfully; then: "I had a fine letter from Ailsa. She sent me twenty dollars," he added naively, "but our sutler has got it all."

"What did Ailsa say?" asked Berkley casually.

"Oh, she enquired about father and me—and you, too, I believe. Oh, yes; she wanted me to say to you that she was well—-and so is that other girl—what\'s her name?"

"Letty Lynden?"

"Oh, yes—Letty Lynden. They\'re in a horrible kind of a temporary hospital down on the York River along with the Sisters of Charity; and she said she had just received orders to pack up and start west with the ambulances."

"West?"

"I believe so."

After a silence Berkley said:

"I heard from her yesterday."

"You did!"

"Yes. Unless your father already knows, it might be well to say to him that Ailsa\'s ambulance train is ordered to rendezvous in the rear of the 5th Provisional Corps head-quarters."

"Our corps!"

"That looks like it, doesn\'t it? The 5th Provisional Corps is
Porter\'s." He turned and looked back, out across the country.

"She may be somewhere out yonder, at this very moment, Steve." He made a vague gesture toward the west, stood looking for a while, then turned and walked slowly on with head lowered.

"I wish my mother and Ailsa were back in New York," said the boy fretfully. "I don\'t see why the whole family should get into hot water at the same time."

"It wouldn\'t surprise me very much if Ailsa\'s ambulance landed beside your mother\'s door at Paigecourt," said Berkley. "The head-quarters of the 5th Corps cannot be very far from Paigecourt." At the cavalry lines he offered his hand to Stephen in farewell.

"Good-bye," said the boy. "I wish you the luck of the 6th Lancers. Since Hanover Court-House nobody calls \'em \'fresh fish\'—just because they charged a few Johnnies with the lance and took a few prisoners and lost thirty horses."

Berkley laughed. "Thanks; and I wish you the luck of the 5th
Zouaves. They\'re into everything, I hear, particularly hen-coops
and pigpens. Casson says they live high in the 5th Zouaves. . .
Good-bye, old fellow . . . will you remember me to your father?"

"I will when he lets me talk to him," grinned Stephen. "We\'re a disciplined regiment—I found that out right away—and there\'s nothing soft for me to expect just because my father is colonel and Josiah Lent happens to be major."

The regimental bands played the next day; the distant cannonade had ceased; sunshine fell from a cloudless sky, and the army watched a military balloon, the "Intrepid," high glistening above the river, its cables trailing in gracious curves earthward.

Porter\'s 5th Corps now formed the rear-guard of the army; entire regiments went on picket, even the two regiments of Lancers took their turn, though not armed for that duty. During the day there had been some unusually brisk firing along the river, near enough to cause regiments that had never been under fire to prick up a thousand pairs of ears and listen. As the day lengthened toward evening, picket firing became incessant, and the occasional solid report of a cannon from the shore opposite disclosed the presence of Confederate batteries, the nearness of which surprised many an untried soldier.

Toward sundown Berkley saw a business-like cavalry officer ride into camp with an escort of the 5th Regulars. Men around him said that the officer was General Philip St. George Cooke, and that the chances were that the regiments of the reserve were going into action pretty soon.

About 3 o\'clock the next morning boots and saddles sounded from the head-quarters of the Cavalry Reserve brigade and the 5th and 6th United States Cavalry, followed by Colonel Rush\'s Lancers, rode out of their camp grounds and were presently followed by the 1st United States and a squadron of Pennsylvania carbineers.

The troopers of the 8th Lancers watched them ride away in the dawn; but mo orders came to follow them, and, discontented, muttering, they went sullenly about their duties, wondering why they, also, had not been called on.

That nobody had caught the great Confederate cavalryman did not console them; they had to listen to the jeers of the infantry, blaming them for Stuart\'s great raid around the entire union army; in sickening reiteration came the question: "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?" And, besides, one morning in a road near camp, some of the 8th Lancers heard comments from a group of general officers which were not at all flattering to their own cavalry.

"You see," said a burly colonel of engineers, "that this army doesn\'t know what real cavalry looks like—except when it gets a glimpse of Jeb Stuart\'s command."

An infantry colonel coincided with him, profanely:

"That damned rebel cavalry chases ours with a regularity and persistence that makes me ill. Did the world ever see the like of it? You send out one of our mounted regiments to look for a mounted rebel regiment, and the moment it finds what it\'s lookin\' for the rebs give a pleased sort of yell, and ours turn tail. Because it\'s become a habit: that\'s why our cavalry runs! And then the fun begins! Lord God Almighty! what\'s the matter with our cavalry?"

"You can\'t make cavalry in a few months," observed a colonel of heavy artillery, stretching his fat, scarlet-striped legs in his stirrups. "What do you expect? Every man, woman, and child south of Mason and Dixon\'s Line knows how to ride. The Southerners are born horsemen. We in the North are not. That\'s the difference. We\'ve got to learn to be. Take a raw soldier and send him forth mounted on an animal with which he has only a most formal acquaintance, and his terrors are increased twofold. When you give him a sabre, pistol, and carbine, to take care of when he has all he can do to take care of himself, those terrors increase in proportion. Then show him the enemy and send him into battle—and what is the result? Skedaddle!

"Don\'t make any mistake; we haven\'t any cavalry yet. Some day we will, when our men learn to ride faster than a walk."

"God!" muttered a brigadier-general under his white moustache; "it\'s been a bitter pill to swallow—this raid around our entire army by fifteen hundred of Jeb Stuart\'s riders and two iron guns!"

The half dozen lancers, lying on their bellies in the grass on the bank above the road where this discussion took place remained crimson, mute, paralysed with mortification. Was that what the army thought of them?

But they had little time for nursing their mortification that morning; the firing along the river was breaking out in patches with a viciousness and volume heretofore unheard; and a six-gun Confederate field battery had joined in, arousing the entire camp of Claymore\'s brigade. Louder and louder grew the uproar along the river; smoke rose and took silvery-edged shape in the sunshine; bugles were calling to the colours regiments encamped on the right; a light battery trotted out across a distant meadow, unlimbered and went smartly into action.

About noon the bugles summoned the 3rd Zouaves. As they were forming, the camps of the 8th Lancers and the 10th Light Battery rang with bugle music. Berkley, standing to horse, saw the Zouaves leaving the hill at a jog-trot, their red legs twinkling; but half way down the slope they were halted to dress ranks; and the Lancers, cantering ahead, turned westward and moved off along the edge of the river swamp toward the piled-up cloud of smoke down stream.

After them trotted the 10th New York Flying Battery as though on parade, their guidons standing straight out behind the red-and-white guidons of the Lancers.

The Zouaves had now reached wet land, where a staff officer met Colonel Craig and piloted him through a field of brush and wild grass, and under the parapets of an emplacement for big guns, on which men were nonchalantly working, to the beginning of a newly laid road of logs. The noise of musketry and the smoke had become prodigious. On the logs of the road lay the first big pool of blood that many of them had ever seen. What it had come from they could not determine; there was nothing dead or dying there.

The men glanced askance at the swamp where the black shining water had risen almost level with the edges of the road; but the Colonel and his staff, still mounted, rode coolly over it, and the regiment followed.

The corduroy road through the heavily wooded swamp which the 3rd Zouaves now followed was the only inlet to the noisy scene of local action, and the only outlet, too.

Except for watching the shells at Blue Bridge, the regiment had never been in battle, had never seen or heard a real battle; many had never even seen a wounded man. They understood that they were going into battle now; and now the regiment caught sight of its first wounded men. Stretchers passed close to them on which soldiers lay naked to the waist, some with breasts glistening red and wet from unstopped haemorrhage, some with white bodies marked only by the little round blue hole with its darker centre. Soldiers passed them, limping, bloody rags dripping from thigh or knee; others staggered along with faces the colour of clay, leaning on the arms of comrades, still others were carried out feet first, sagging, a dead-weight in the arms of those who bore them. One man with half his fingers gone, the raw stumps spread, hurried out, screaming, and scattering blood as he ran.

The regiment passed an artilleryman lying in the water whose head, except for the lower jaw, was entirely missing; and another on his back in the ooze whose bowels were protruding between his fingers; and he was trying very feebly to force them back, while two comrades strove in vain to lift him.

The regiment sickened as it looked; here and there a young zouave turned deathly pale, reeled out of the ranks, leaned against a tree, nauseated, only to lurch forward again at the summons of the provost guard; here and there a soldier disengaged his white turban from his fez and dropped it to form a sort of Havelock; for the vertical sun was turning the men dizzy, and the sights they saw were rapidly unnerving them.

They heard the tremendous thunder and felt the concussion of big guns; the steady raining rattle of musketry, the bark of howitzers, the sharp, clean crack of rifled field guns dismayed them. Sometimes, far away, they could distinguish the full deep cheering of a union regiment; and once they caught the distant treble battle cry of the South. There were moments when a sudden lull in the noise startled the entire regiment. Even their officers looked up sharply at such times. But ahead they could still see Colonel Craig riding calmly forward, his big horse picking its leisurely way over the endless road of logs; they could see the clipped gray head of Major Lent under its red forage-cap, steady, immovable, as he controlled his nervous mount with practised indifference.

It was broiling hot in the swamp; the Zouaves stood bathed in perspiration as the regiment halted for a few minutes, then they moved forward again toward a hard ridge of grass which glimmered green beyond the tangled thicke............