"
"What! like poor free Levi?" stormed the Major.
"Wake up, confound you!" bawled somebody in his ear. "You've lurched
against my side until my ribs are sore. I say, are you going on forever,
anyhow? We've halted for the night."
"I can't stop!" cried Dan, groping in the darkness, then he fell heavily
upon the damp ground, while a voice down the road began shouting, "Detail
for guard!" Half asleep and cursing, the men responded to their names and
hurried off, and as the silence closed in, the army slept like a child upon
the roadside.
With the first glimmer of dawn they were on the march again, passing all
day through the desolate flat country, where the women ran weeping to the
doorways, and waved empty hands as they went by. Once a girl in a homespun
dress, with a spray of apple blossoms in her black hair, brought out a
wooden bucket filled with buttermilk and passed it along the line.
"Fight to the end, boys," she cried defiantly, "and when the end comes,
keep on fighting. If you go back on Lee there's not a woman in Virginia
will touch your hand."
"That's right, little gal!" shrieked a husky private. "Three cheers for
Marse Robert! an' we'll whip the earth in our bar' feet befo' breakfast."
"All the same I wish old Stonewall was along," muttered Pinetop. "If I
could jest see old Stonewall or his ghost ahead, I'd know thar was an open
road somewhere that Sheridan ain't got his eye on."
As the sun rose high, refugees from Richmond flocked after them to shout
that the town had been fired by the citizens, who had moved, with their
families, to the Capitol Square as the flames spread from the great tobacco
warehouses.
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