But the people thronged to Hollywood, above the rushing river. Hollow and hill, ivy-mantled oaks and grass purpled with violets, the place was a good one in which to lay down the outworn form that had done service and was loved. Flowers grew there with a wild luxuriance. To-day they were brought beside from all gardens—
“We well remembered how he loved to dash,
Into the fight, festooned from summer’s bowers.
How like a fountain’s spray, his sabre flash,
Leaped from a mass of flowers—”
To-day flowers lined the open grave; they covered the coffin and the flag.
Back in the hospital a man with three wounds wailed all night. “I had a brother and he was living up North and so he thought that-er-way. And he wrote that he held by the Nation just as hard as I held by the State. And so he up and joined the Army of the Potomac and came down here. And in the Wilderness the other day—and in the Wilderness the other day—oh, in the Wilderness the other day—I was sharpshooting! I was up in a tree, close to the bark, like a ’pecker. There was a gully below with a stream running down it, and on the other side of the gully was an oak with a man in it, close to the bark like a ’pecker. And we were Yank and Johnny Reb, and so every time one of us showed as much as the tip of a ’pecker’s wing, the other one fired. We fired and fired. And at last he wasn’t so cautious, and I got him. And first his musket fell, down and down, for he was up high. And then the body came and it hit every bough as it came. And something in me gave a word of command. It said ‘Go and look.’ I got down out of the oak, for I was in an oak tree, too, and I went down one side of the gully and up the other. And he was lying all doubled up. And I got another word of command, ‘Turn him over.’ And I did, and he was my brother.... And I’m tired of war.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
COLD HARBOUR
These were the moves of the following two weeks. Six days, from the day of the Bloody Angle to the eighteenth of May, the two armies stayed as they were, save for slight, shifting, wary movements, as of two opposed Indians in the brush. On the eighteenth, the blue attacked—again the salient. Ewell, with thirty guns, broke and scattered the assault. On the nineteenth, the “sidling” process recommenced. On this day Ewell came into contact with the Federal left, and in the engagement that ensued both sides lost heavily. The night of the twentieth, the Army of the Potomac, Hancock leading, started for the North Anna. The morning of the twenty-first, the Army of Northern Virginia struck, by the Telegraph Road, for the same stream. It had the inner line, and it got there first. At noon the twenty-second it began to cross the river. That night Lee and his men rested on the southern bank. Morning of the twenty-third showed on the opposite shore the head of the blue column.
The blue crossed at Jericho Ford, and by the Chesterfield Bridge, not without conflict and trouble. It won over, but over in two distinctly separated wings, and that which separated them was Robert Edward Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Here was now another V, the point now upon the river, unassailable, the sides entrenched, the blue army split in twain. Followed two days of unavailing attempts to find a way to crush the V. Then, on the night of the twenty-sixth, the blue, having fairly effectively hidden its intention, “sidled” again. The Army of the Potomac left the North Anna, taking the road for the Pamunkey which it crossed at Hanover. The V at once became a column and followed.