“Men get well fast with Stonewall Jackson,” said Colonel Talbot. “I'll confess to you lads that I thought it was all up with us there in the lower valley, when we were surrounded by the masses of the enemy, and I don't see yet how we got here.”
“But we are here, Leonidas,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, “and that's enough for us to know.”
“Right, Hector, old friend. It's enough for us to know. Do you by chance happen to have left two of those delightful cigarettes?”
“Just two, Leonidas, one for you and one for me, and now is a chance to smoke 'em.”
The young lieutenants drew to one side while the two old friends smoked and compared notes. They did not smoke, but they compared notes also, as they rested on the turf. The rain had ceased and the grass was dry. They saw through the twilight the dark mass of the Massanuttons, the extreme southern end, and Happy Tom Langdon waved his hand toward the mountain, like one who salutes a friend.
“Good old mountain,” he said. “You've been a buffer between us and the enemy more than once, but it took a mind like Stonewall Jackson's to keep moving you around so you would stand between the armies of the enemy and make the Yankees fight, only one army at a time.”
“You're right,” said Harry, who was enjoying the deep luxury of rest. “I didn't know before that mountains could be put to such good use. Look, you can see lights on the ridge now.”
They saw lights, evidently those of powerful lanterns swung to and fro, but they did not understand them, nor did they care much.
“Signals are just trifles to me now,” said Happy Tom. “What do I care for lights moving on a mountain four or five miles away, when for a month, day and night without stopping, a million Yankees have been shooting rifle bullets at me, and a thousand of the biggest cannon ever cast have been pouring round shot, long shot, shell, grape, canister and a hundred other kinds of missiles that I can't name upon this innocent and unoffending head of mine.”
“They'll be on us tomorrow, Happy,” said St. Clair, more gravely. “This picnic of ours can't last more than a day.”