"Your name, sir, and your regiment? I am Colonel Putnam."
He has laid his hand on the broad shoulder under the cloak and plainly feels the start and thrill with which his words are greeted. He even fancies he can hear the stifled word "God!" The man seems stricken dumb, and more sharply the colonel begins his stern query a second time, but gets no farther than "Your name," when, with a violent wrench, the stranger is free; he makes a spring, trips over some loose rubbish, and goes crashing to earth.
"The guard!" yells the colonel, as he throws himself upon him, but the man is up in an instant, hurls off his antagonist, and, this time, leaps off into the darkness in comparative safety. But he has left a clew behind. As the soldiers of the provost guard come running around into the yard and the windows are thrown up and eager heads peer forth in excited inquiry, Colonel Putnam raises to the light of the first lantern a hairy, bushy object that he holds in his hand; it is a false beard, and a big one.
"By Jove!" says the lieutenant. "It must be some rebel spy."
III.
Daybreak, and the broad expanse of valley opening away to the south is just lighting up in chill, half-reluctant fashion, as though the night had been far too short or the revels of yester-even far too long. There is a swish and plash of rapid running waters close at hand, and here and there, where the stream is dammed by rocky ridge, the wisps of fog rise slowly into air, mingling with and adding to the prevailing tone of chilly gray. Through these fog-wreaths there stands revealed a massive barrier of wooded and rock-ribbed heights, towering aloft and shutting out the eastern sky, all their crests a-swim in floating cloud, all their rugged foothills dotted with the tentage of a sleeping army. Here, close at hand on the banks of the rushing river, a sentry paces slowly to and fro, the dew dripping from his shouldered musket and beading on his cartridge-box. The collar of his light-blue overcoat is muffled up about his ears, and his forage cap is pulled far down over his blinking eyes. As he paces southward he can see along the stream-bed camps and pale-blue ghosts of sentries pacing as wearily as himself in the wan and cheerless light. Trees are dripping with heavy charge of moisture that the faintest whiff of morning air sends showering on the bank beneath; and a little deluge of the kind coming suddenly down upon this particular sentry as he strolls under the spreading branches serves to augment the expression of general weariness and disgust, which by no means distinguishes him from his more distant fellows, but evokes no further comment than a momentary huddling of head and shoulders into the depths of the blue collar, and the briefest possible mention of the last place of all others one would be apt to connect with cooling showers. Facing about and slouching along the other way the sentry sees a picture that, had he poetry or love of the grand and beautiful in his soul, would a thousand-fold compensate him for his enforced vigil. Every moment, as the timid light grows bolder with its reinforcement from the east, there opens a vista before his eyes that few men could look upon unmoved. To his right the brawling Shenandoah, swift and swirling, goes rushing through its last rapids, as though bent on having one final "hurrah" on its own account before losing its identity in the welcoming waters of the Potomac. Hemming it in to the right—the east—and shutting out the crimson dawn are the massive bulwarks of the Loudon Heights climbing towards the changing heavens. Westward, less bold and jagged, but still a mighty barrier in almost any other companionship, are the sister heights of Bolivar, scarred and seamed with earth-work and rifle-pit, and bristling with abattis and battery. Down the intervening valley plunges the Shenandoah and winds the macadam of the highway, its dust subdued for the time being; while, straight away to the front, mist-wreathed at their base from the sleeping waters of the winding canal, cloud-capped at their lofty summit from the bank of vapor that hovers along the entire range, rock-ribbed, precipitous, magnificent in silent, stubborn strength, the towering heights of Maryland span the scene from east to west, and stand superb, the background to the picture. All as yet is sombre in tone, black, dark green, and brown and gray. The mist hangs heavy over everything, and the twinkle of an occasional camp-fire is but the sodden glow of ember whose life is long since burned out. But, see! Through the deep, jagged rift where runs the Potomac, along the rock-bound gorge through which in ages past the torrent burst its way, there creeps a host of tiny shafts of color—the skirmishers, the éclaireurs, of the irresistible array of which they form but the foremost line—the coming army of the God of Day. Here behind the frowning Loudon no such light troops venture; but, skilled riders as they are,
"Spurring the winds of the morning,"
they pour through the rocky gap, and now they find their lodgment on every salient of the grim old wall beyond the broad Potomac. Here, there, everywhere along the southern face are glinting shafts or points on rocks or ridge. Seam and shadow take on a purplish tinge. The hanging mass of cloud beams with answering smile upon its earthward face as gold and crimson and royal purple mantle the billowy cheeks. Now the rocks light up with warmer glow, and long, horizontal shadows are thrown across the hoary curtain, and slowly the gorgeous cloud-crests lift away and more and more the heights come gleaming into view. Now there are breaks and caverns here and there through the shifting vapors, and hurried little glimpses of the cliffs beyond, and these cloud-caves grow and widen, and broad sheets of yellow light seem warming up the dripping wall and changing into mist the clinging beads of dew. And now, far aloft, the fringe of firs and stunted oaks is seen upon the summit as the sun breaks through the shimmering veil, and there, fluttering against the blue of heaven, circled in fleecy frame of vapor, glowing, waving in the sky, all aflame with tingeing sunshine, there leaps into view the "Flag of the Free," crowning the Maryland heights and shining far up the guarded valley of the Shenandoah. A puff of smoke juts out from the very summit across the stream; the sentry eyes it with a sigh of reviving interest in life; five, ten, twenty seconds he counts before the boom of the salute follows the sudden flash and wakes the echoes of the opposite cliffs.
Listen! Up on the westward heights, somewhere among those frowning batteries, a bugle rings out upon the air—