"I'd like to take it home." They chaffed the passing infantry, and were answered in kind. Penhallow impatient saw that the road would soon be clear. As he issued quick orders and men mounted in haste, a young aide rode up, saluted, and said, "I have orders, Colonel, from General Hunt to guide you to where he desires your guns to be parked."
"One moment," said Penhallow; "the road is a tangle of wagons:" and to a captain, "Ride on and side-track those wagons; be quick too." Then he said to the aide, "We have a few minutes—how are things going? I heard of General Reynold's death, and little more."
"Yes, we were outnumbered yesterday and—well licked. Why they did not rush us, the Lord knows!"
"Give me some idea of our position."
"Well, sir, here to our right is Cemetery Hill, strongly held; to your left the line turns east and then south in a loop to wooded hills—one Culp's, they call it. That is our right. There is a row on there as you can hear. Before us as we stand our position runs south along a low ridge and ends on two pretty high-wooded hills they call Round Tops. That's our left. From our front the ground slopes down some forty feet or so, and about a mile away the Rebs hold the town seminary and a long low rise facing us."
"Thank you, that seems pretty clear. There is firing over beyond the cemetery?"
"Yes, the skirmishers get cross now and then. The road seems clear, sir."
Orders rang out and the guns rattled up the pike like some monstrous articulated insect, all encumbering wagons being swept aside to make way for the privileged guns.
"You are to park here, sir, on the open between this and the Taneytown road. There is a brook—a creek."
"Thanks, that is clear."