The ground thus chosen lay some hundred yards behind the low crest held midway of our line by the Second Corps, whence the ground fell away in a gentle slope. The space back of our line was in what to a layman's eye would have seemed the wildest confusion of wagons, ambulances, ammunition mules, cattle, and wandering men. It was slowly assuming some order as the Provost Guard, dusty, despotic and cross, ranged the wagons, drove back stragglers, and left wide lanes for the artillery to move at need to the front.
The colonel spent some hours in getting his guns placed and in seeing that no least detail was lacking. With orders about instant readiness, with a word of praise here, of sharp criticism there, he turned away a well-contented man and walked up the slope in search of the headquarters. As he approached the front, he saw the bushy ridge in which, or back of which, the men lay at rest. Behind them were surgeons selecting partially protected places for immediate aid, stretcher-bearers, ambulances and all the mechanism of help for the wounded. Officers were making sure that men had at hand one hundred rounds of ammunition.
Some three hundred yards behind the mid-centre of the Second Corps, on the Taneytown road, Penhallow was directed to a small, rather shabby one-storey farm-house. "By George," he murmured, "here is one general who means to be near the front." He was met at the door by the tall handsome figure of General Hancock, a blue-eyed man with a slight moustache over a square expressively firm jaw.
"Glad to see you, Penhallow. Meade was anxious—I knew you would be on time. Come in."
Penhallow saw before him a mean little room, on one side a wide bed with a gaudy coverlet, on a pine table in the centre a bucket of water, a tin cup, and a candle-stick. Five rickety rush-covered chairs completed the furnishings.
Meade rose from study of the map an engineer officer was explaining. He was unknown to Penhallow, who observed him with interest—a tall spare man with grey-sprinkled dark hair a large Roman nose and spectacles over wide blue eyes; a gentleman of the best, modest, unassuming, and now carelessly clad.
"Colonel Penhallow," said Hancock.
"Glad to see you." He turned to receive with evident pleasure a report of the morning's fight on the right wing, glanced without obvious interest at the captured flag of the Stonewall Brigade, and greeted the colonel warmly. "I can only offer you water," he said. "Sit down. You may like to look over this map."
While the Commander wrote orders and despatched aide after aide, Penhallow bent over the map. "You see," said Hancock, "we have unusual luck for us in a short interior line. I judge from the moving guidons that Lee is extending his front—it may be six miles long."
"And ours?"