After this, and the terrible strain of waiting, Lieutenant Coleman and Corporal Bromley walked away in different directions on the mountain-top; and poor Philip, left alone, sat down on the ground and burst into tears over the death of his favorite general. He saw nothing but gloom and disaster in the future. What would the old army do without its brilliant leader?
"POOR PHILIP, LEFT ALONE, BURST INTO TEARS."
And, sure enough, on the following morning came the news that the heretofore victorious army was falling back across the Chattahoochee; and another despatch confirmed the death of General Sherman, who had been riding along his lines with a single orderly when he was shot through the heart by a sharp-shooter of the enemy.
Every morning after that the three soldiers went up to the station at the appointed hour, expecting only bad news, and, without fail, only bad news came. They learned that the baffled army in and about Marietta was being reorganized by General Thomas; but the ray of hope was quenched in their hearts a few days later, when the news came that General Grant had met with overwhelming disaster before Richmond, and, like McClellan before him, was fighting his way back to his base of supplies at City Point.
One day—it was August 6—there came a message from the chief signal-office at Chattanooga directing them to remain at their posts, at all hazards, until further orders; and, close upon this, a report that General Grant's army was rapidly concentrating on Washington by way of the Potomac River.
They had no doubt that the swift columns of Lee were already in motion overland toward the National capital, and they were not likely to be many days behind the Federal army in concentrating at that point. Rumors of foreign intervention followed quick on the heels of this disheartening news, and on August 10 came a despatch which, being interpreted, read: "Yesterday, after a forced march of incredible rapidity, Longstreet's corps crossed the Upper Potomac near the Chain Bridge, and captured two forts to the north of Rock Creek Church. At daylight on August 9, after tearing up a section of the Baltimore and Ohio's tracks, a column of cavalry under Fitzhugh Lee captured a train-load of the government archives, bound for Philadelphia."
Thus on the very day when General Sherman was bombarding the city of Atlanta, and when everything was going well with the National cause elsewhere, these misguided young men were brought to the verge of despair by some mysterious agency which was cunningly falsifying the daily despatches. Nothing more melancholy can be conceived than the entries made at this time by Lieutenant Coleman in the station diary.
Returning to the entry of July 26, which was the day following that on which they had received information of the death of General Sherman, the unhappy officer writes: