“The fourth of May! Last fourth of May it was Stonewall Jackson—lying over there by Dowdall’s Tavern—with just a week to live. Stuart—”
“It’s come to a question of figures. If they can keep on doubling us in number, if they can add and add reinforcements and we cannot, if they have made up their minds to stand all the killing necessary, then, with a determined general, it is not impossible that after years of trying they may get between us and Richmond.”
“They may eventually. I don’t think they will do it this campaign.”
“No. I reckon not—”
The group fell silent, looking out upon the waves of wooded land and the light on the horizon. “I was through here,” said one at last, “ten years ago. I was riding with a farmer—a young man—and I remember that I said it was like a region that had gone to sleep in its cradle and never waked up, and he said that that was what was the matter with it—that nothing ever happened here! I wonder—”
“Don’t wonder. What’s the use?”
“It’s a strange world!”
“Strange! That’s the thing about the universe I think of most at night—how queer it is!”
“Unity! That’s what they teach—all the philosophers! And yet a unity that tears its own flesh—”
“Sometimes unity does that very thing. I’ve seen a man do it.”