Joe, always obedient, took up the gun again and remained automaton-like, to obey the last speaker.
"For shame, Bryant!" exclaimed Seth Williams, who came up at that moment. "He is crazy. Would you have him expose his life that way, when he doesn't know what he is doing? Put the gun down, Joe, and go that way," said Seth, pointing to the west. "Go to Mr. Tompkins; he wants you."
Joe hastened to obey, and Seth hurried on.
There seemed to be some fatal attraction about that long line of moving men, with burnished arms and glittering bayonets, to poor Joe. He had not gone a dozen rods before he paused to look back at them. Tramp, tramp, tramp, they went, on and on, and he looked till his weak mind became all confused with wonder. As the dangerous reptile chains the bird it seeks to destroy, and draws it involuntarily to its death, so poor Joe felt involuntarily drawn towards that moving line of gray coats and glittering steel. Who were they? Where were they going? When would that long line end?
They kept passing, passing, passing, so many men, and so much alike, that poor Joe finally concluded it must be only one man, doomed for some misdeed to walk on, and on, and on forever, never advancing on his endless journey. Joe forgot Howard Jones and Seth Williams, and, pausing, gazed on in mute wonder.
But the main body had at length passed. Then the line became broken, and only straggling groups of horsemen and footmen went by; then these finally came at longer intervals, but in larger groups. Joe thought the end must be near.
The rear guard of the Confederates paused in front of Uncle Dan's cabin, to check the advance guard of Major Fleming.
"Halt!" cried the officer. "Deploy skirmishers and the advance."
"They're almost upon us, lieutenant," said a subordinate officer, riding in from the woods.