With the cry of "Forward!" they
struggled to their feet again, and went stumbling on into the vast
uncertainty and the approaching night. Breathless, starving, with their
rags pinned together, and their mouths bleeding from three days' rations of
parched corn, they still kept onward, marching with determined eyes to
whatever and wherever the end might be. Petersburg had fallen, Richmond was
in flames behind them, the Confederacy was, perhaps, buried in the ruins of
its Capitol, but Lee was still somewhere to the front, so his army
followed.
"How long have we been marching, boys? I can't remember," asked Dan, when,
after a short rest, they formed again and started forward over the old
road. In the tatters of his gray uniform, with his broken shoes tied on his
feet and his black hair hanging across his eyes, he might have been one of
the beggars who warm themselves in the sun of Southern countries.
"Oh, I reckon we left the Garden of Eden about six thousand years ago,"
responded a wag from somewhere--he was too tired to recognize the voice.
"There! the skirmishers have struck that blamed cavalry again. Plague them!
They're as bad as wasps!"
"Has anybody some parched corn?" inquired Bland, plaintively. "I'll trade a
whole raw ear for it. It makes my gums bleed so, I can't chew it."
Dan plunged his hand into his pocket, and drew out the corn which he had
shelled and parched at the last halt. As he exchanged it for the "whole raw
ear," he fell to wondering vaguely what had become of Big Abel since that
dim point in eternity when they had left the trenches that surrounded
Petersburg.
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