She nodded, yawning, then pulling her foot-mantle closer about her shoulders, pattered back into her chamber, and I went below and ordered our horses saddled, and breakfast to be served us as soon as might be.
And so it happened that, ere the robins had done caroling their morning songs, and the far, sweet anthems of the hermit-birds still rang in dewy woodlands, Elsin and I dismounted in Granger's hay-field just as the troops marched up in a long, dense column, the massed music of many regiments ahead, but only a single drum timing the steady tread.
All was done in perfect decorum and order. A hay-wagon was the pulpit; around it the drummers piled their drums, tier rising on tier; the ensigns draped the national colors over the humble platform, setting regimental and state standards at the corners; and I noted there some curious flags, one borne by a Massachusetts battalion, white, with a green tree on it; another, a yellow naval flag with a coiled rattlesnake; another, carried by a company of riflemen, on which was this design:
1776.
XI Virginia Reg't,
and I knew that I was looking upon the famous regimental standard of Morgan's Rifles.
Without confusion, with only a low-spoken command here and there, battalion after battalion marched up, stacked arms, forming three sides of a hollow square, the pulpit, with its flags and tiers of drums, making the fourth side. The men stood at ease, hands loosely clasped and hanging in front of them. The brigade chaplain quietly crossed the square to his rude pulpit, mounted it, and, as he bowed his head in prayer, every cocked hat came off, every head was lowered.
Country-folk, yokels, farmers, had gathered from all directions; invalids from the camp hospitals were there, too, faces clay-color, heads and limbs heavily bandaged. One of these, a sergeant of the New York line, who wore a crimson heart sewed on his breast, was led to his place between two comrades, he having both eyes shot out; and the chaplain looked at him hard for a moment, then gave out the hymn, leading the singing in a deep, full voice:
"Through darkest night
I know that Thou canst see.
Night blinds my sight,