“Must have been an all-fired lasting top rail—”
“—And they had supper and went to bed cheered and comforted. And by and by, in the morning, just after reveille, comes Gordon, fresh as a daisy. And he looks at the boundaries of that field, and he colours up. ‘Men,’ he says in a kind of grieved anger, ‘you have disobeyed orders!’ Whereupon those innocents rose up and assured him that not a man had touched anything but a top rail!”
Fall in! Fall in! Column Forward!
It rained, and rained. You saw the column as through smoke, winding toward the pass of the South Mountain. From the rear came fitfully the sound of musketry. But there was no determined pursuit. Early kept the rear; Stuart, off in the rain and mist, lion-bold, and, throughout the long retreat to the fortress, greatly sagacious, guarded the flanks. A.P. Hill and Longstreet were now beyond the mountains, swinging southward by the Ringgold road. With the First and the Third rode Lee, grey on grey Traveller, in the grey rain, his face turned homeward, turned toward the fortress of the South, vast, mournful, thenceforth trebly endangered. It was the sixth of July. A year ago had been the Seven Days.
Back on the road of the wounded there was trouble. Imboden, having crossed the mountain, determined upon a short cut by a country road to Greencastle. On through the small town rode the vanguard, the Eighteenth Virginia Cavalry. Behind, as rapidly as might be, came the immense and painful train. On the outskirts of the place a band of civilians attacked a weakly guarded portion of the column. They had axes, and with these they hewed in two the wagon yokes or cut the spokes from the wheels. The wagon beds dropped heavily upon the earth. “Ahh!” groaned the wounded. “Ahhh! Aaaahh!”
Back in wrath came a detachment of the Eighteenth, scattering or capturing the wielders of axes. The long train passed Greencastle. Before it lay the road to Williamsport, the road to the Potomac. The rain was streaming, the wind howling, and now the Federal cavalry made its appearance. All the rest of the day the train was subjected to small sudden attacks, descents now on this section, now on that. The grey escort, cavalry and artillery, beat them off like stinging bees; the grey wagoners plied their long whips, the exhausted horses strained forward yet again, under the wagon wheel was felt again the ridge and hollow of the storm-washed road. “Woe!” cried the wind. “Woe, woe! Pain and woe!”
There came a report that blue troops held Williamsport, but when late in a stormy afternoon the head of Imboden’s column came to this place, so known by now, frontier, with only the moat of the river between the foe’s territory and the fortress’s territory,—when the advance rode into town, there were found only peaceful Marylanders. The grey convoy occupied Williamsport. At last the torturing wagons stopped, at last the moaning hurt were lifted out, at last the surgeons could help, at last the dead were parted from the living. Imboden requisitioned all the kitchens of the place. There arose a semblance of warmth, a pale ghost of cheer. Here and there sounded even a weak laugh.
“Say, Doctor! after hell, purgatory seems kind of good to us! That was hell back there on the road—hell if ever there was hell.... Ouch!... Ooooghh! Doctor!”
“Doctor, do you reckon I’ll live to get across? I want to see my wife—I want to see her so badly.—There’s a boy, too, and I’ve never seen him—”
“How air we going to get across? Air there boats?”