Berkley could distinguish a portion of the road that ran down to the burning bridge, where part of McDunn’s battery was in position.  Across the hills to the left a scarlet windrow undulating on either flank of the battery marked the line of battle where the Zouaves lay in a clover-field, within supporting distance of the guns.

Except for these, and a glimpse of Lowe’s balloon overhead, Berkley could not see anything whatever even remotely connected with the uproar which continued steadily in the west and south.  Nobody seemed to know whose troops were engaged, where they came from, whither they were trying to force a fiery road through a land in arms against their progress.

At times, to Berkley, it seemed as though every tree, every hill, every thicket was watching him with sombre intent; as if Nature herself were hostile, stealthy, sinister, screening terrors yet unloosed, silently storing up violence in dim woods, aiding and abetting ambush with all her clustering foliage; and that every river, every swamp, every sunny vista concealed some hidden path to death.

He stood rigid at his horse’s head, lance in hand, dirty, smoke-blackened, his ears deafened by the cannonade, his eyes cool and alert, warily scanning hill and hollow and thicket.

Dead men of his regiment were borne past him; he glanced furtively at them, not yet certain that the lower form of fear had left him, not yet quite realising that he had blundered into manhood—­that for the first time in his life he was ready to take his chance with life.

But, little by little, as the hours passed, there in the trodden grass he began to understand something of the unformulated decision that had been slowly growing in him—­of the determination, taking shape, to deal more nobly with himself—­with this harmless self which had accepted unworthiness and all its attributes, and which riven pride would have flung back at the civilisation which branded him as base.

It came—­this knowledge—­like a slowly increasing flare of light; and at last he said under his breath, to himself: 

“Nothing is unworthily born that is born of God’s own law.  I have been what I chose.  I can be what I will.”

A gracious phantom grew under his eyes taking exquisite shape before him; and dim-eyed, he stared at it till it dwindled, faded, dissolved into empty air and sunshine.

No; he could never marry without revealing what he was; and that he would never do because of loyalty to that tender ghost which he must shield for ever even as he would have shielded her in life.

No living soul had any right to know.  No love of his for any woman could ever justify betrayal of what alone concerned the dead.

The shells, which, short fused, had been bursting high above the swamp to the right, suddenly began to fall nearer the cavalry, and after a while a shell exploded among them, killing a horse.