"Well, from wing to wing across the loop to right, not half of that."
"I see," said Penhallow, and accepting a drink of tepid water he went out to find and report to the chief of artillery, General Hunt.
He met him with General John Gibbon and two aides a few yards from the door, and making his brief report learned as he moved away that there was some trouble on the left wing. Meade coming out with Hancock, they mounted and rode away in haste, too late to correct General Sickles' unfortunate decision to improve General Meade's battle-line. It was not Penhallow's business, nor did he then fully understand that costly blunder. Returning to his guns, he sent, as Hunt had ordered, two of his reserve batteries up to the back of the line of the Second Corps, and finding General Gibbon temporarily in command walked with him to what is now called the "Crest" and stood among Cushing's guns. Alertly interested, Penhallow saw to the left, half hidden by bushes and a clump of trees, a long line of infantry lying at ease, their muskets in glittering stacks behind them. To the right the ground was more open. A broken stone fence lay in front of the Second Corps. It was patched with fence rails and added stone, and where the clump of trees projected in advance of the line made a right angle and extended thence in front of the batteries on the Crest about thirty yards. Then it met a like right angle of stone fencing and followed the line far to the right. Behind these rude walls lay the Pennsylvania and New York men, three small regiments. Further back on a little higher ground was the silent array of cannon, thus able at need to fire over the heads of the guarding infantry, now idly lying at rest in the baking heat of a July morning. The men about the cannon lounged at ease on the ground in the forty foot interspaces between the batteries, some eighteen pieces in all.
Suddenly an aide rode up, and saying, "See you again, Penhallow," Gibbon rode away in haste. Penhallow, who was carefully gathering in all that could then be seen from the locality, moved over to where a young battery captain was leaning against a cannon wheel wiping the sweat from his face or gazing over the vale below him, apparently lost in thought. "Captain Cushing, I believe," said the colonel. "I am Colonel Penhallow, in command of the reserve artillery."
"Indeed!" said the young officer. "These are some of your guns—"
"Not mine—I was out of it long ago. They still carry the brand of my old iron-mills."
"We shall see, sir, that they do honour to your name."
"I am sure of that," returned the colonel, looking at the face of the officer, who as he spoke patted the gun beside him in an affectionate way.
"It seems very peaceful," he said.
"Yes, yes," returned Penhallow, "very."