Penhallow, intent, hardly heard them, but said presently, "There are guidons moving fast to their right."
"Oh, artillery taking position. We shall hear from them," returned Gibbon. "Hancock thinks that being beaten on both flanks, Lee will attack our centre, and this is the lowest point."
"Well," said Haskell, "it would be madness—can Lee remember Malvern
Hill?"
"I wonder what Grant is doing?" remarked Gibbon. At that time, seated under an oak, watched at a distance by John Penhallow and a group of officers, he was dictating to unlucky Pemberton the terms of Vicksburg's surrender.
Penhallow got down from his perch and wandered among the other guns, talking to the men who were lying on the sod, or interested in the battery horses behind the shelter of trees quietly munching the thin grasses. He returned to Cushing's guns, and being in the mental attitude of intense attention to things he would not usually have noticed, he was struck with the young captain's manly build, and then with his delicacy of feature, something girl-like and gentle in his ways.
Penhallow remarked that the guns so hot already from the sun would be too easily overheated when they were put to use. "Ah," returned Cushing, "but will they be asked to talk today?" The innocent looking smile and the quick flash of wide-opened eyes told of his wish to send messages across the vale.
"Yes, I think so," said the colonel; "I think so,"—and again observant he saw the slight figure straighten and a quite other look of tender sadness come upon his face.
"How quiet they are—how very quiet!" Then he laughed merrily. "See that dog on the Emmitsburg road. He doesn't know which side he's on."
Penhallow looked at his watch. "It is one o'clock." Then his glass was up. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as he closed it, "now we shall catch it. I thought as much."
A mile away, far on Lee's right, on the low ridge in front of his position, a flash of light was seen. As the round ring of smoke shot out from the cannon, the colonel remembered the little Leila's delight when he blew smoke rings as they sat on the porch. Instantly a second gun spoke. The two shells flew over our line and lit far to the rear, while at once along Lee's position a hundred and fifty guns rang out and were instantly answered by our own artillery from Round Top to Cemetery Hill. General Hunt beside him replying to the quick questions he put, said, "We could not place over seventy-five guns—not room enough."