MAP OF THE UNITED STATES AND CONFEDERATE STATES BY FREDERICK HENRY COLEMAN (LATE USA) SHERMAN TERRITORY A.D. 1865.
Although they accepted the map without further discussion, its white face, looking down on them from the wall as they sat about the evening fire, provoked many a talk about affairs in the world below. The time for the election of a new President had passed since they had been on the mountain. After the complete and pitiful collapse of Lincoln's administration, they had no doubt that McClellan had been elected. Philip thought the new capital should be located at Piqua, Ohio (which was where his uncle lived), as it was near the center of population!
But Bromley favored the city of Cleveland. Ohio, he pointed out, extended entirely across the Union, and, as the State which linked the two parts together, it would need to be strongly guarded, and the capital with its troops and fortifications would strengthen that weak link in the chain. Cincinnati was too close to the enemy's territory to be thought of as a capital.
Shortly before undertaking the map, Lieutenant Coleman had the good fortune to bring down a large gray eagle, which, although soaring high above the valleys, was but just skimming the mountain-top. This was a fortunate event, because the very last steel pen had become very worn and corroded. Lieutenant Coleman had been longing above all things for quills, and now that he wrote again with an easy and flowing hand, he seems to have forgotten that his supply of paper was limited. In the controversy over the map the entries are of unusual length, and then suddenly they become brief and cramped, and are written in so small a hand that there can be no doubt the writer took sudden alarm on discovering how few blank pages were left in the book.
Since Christmas the telescope had rarely been taken from its place on the chimney, and if they looked over into the Cove or the valley without it, those snow-covered regions below were far-off countries, where the houses showed only as rounded forms, and the human ants who lived in them were scarcely visible.
CHAPTER XII
HOW THE BEAR DISGRACED HIMSELF
At last the long winter came to an end. By the middle of March the warm sun and soft south winds began to thaw the February snows. On such a day, when the afternoon sun beat with unusual warmth on the northern face of the mountain, the three soldiers stood together in front of the house, noting everywhere the joyful signs of the approach of spring. The snow, where it lay thickest in the hollows of the plateau, was soft and porous and grimy with dirt. There were bare spaces here and there on the ground, and where a stick or a stone showed through the thin crust the snow had retired around it as if it gave out a heat of its own. The melting icicles pendent from the eaves glittered in the sun and dripped into the channels alongside the walls.
They had a great longing to see the grass and the leaves again and welcome the early birds of spring. As they looked about on these hopeful signs in the midst of the great stillness to which they had become used, a sudden deafening crash rang in their startled ears. The sound was like the explosion of a mine or the dull roar of a siege-mortar at a little distance away. It came from the Cove to the north, and the first crash was followed by lesser reports, and each sound was echoed back from the mountains beyond.
The first thought of the three soldiers was of the opening of a battle. Their first fear was that a great mass of earth and rock had fallen from the edge of the plateau to the base of the mountain. They made their way cautiously in the direction of the sound, almost distrusting the ground under their feet. The gnarled chestnuts on the edge of the cliff were as firmly rooted as ever. When they had advanced to where Philip's sharp eyes caught the first view of the postmaster's cabin through the twisted tree-trunks, he remembered the words of Andy, the guide, on the night when they had waited for the moon to go down. He quickly caught the arms of his companions.