An army in line-of-battle awaiting attack, or prepared to deliver it, presents strange contrasts.  At the front are precision, formality, fixity, and silence.  Toward the rear these characteristics are less and less conspicuous, and finally, in point of space, are lost altogether in confusion, motion and noise.  The homogeneous becomes heterogeneous.  Definition is lacking; repose is replaced by an apparently purposeless activity; harmony vanishes in hubbub, form in disorder.  Commotion everywhere and ceaseless unrest.  The men who do not fight are never ready.

From his position at the right of his company in the front rank, Captain Graffenreid had an unobstructed outlook toward the enemy.  A half-mile of open and nearly level ground lay before him, and beyond it an irregular wood, covering a slight acclivity; not a human being anywhere visible.  He could imagine nothing more peaceful than the appearance of that pleasant landscape with its long stretches of brown fields over which the atmosphere was beginning to quiver in the heat of the morning sun.  Not a sound came from forest or field—­not even the barking of a dog or the crowing of a cock at the half-seen plantation house on the crest among the trees.  Yet every man in those miles of men knew that he and death were face to face.

Captain Graffenreid had never in his life seen an armed enemy, and the war in which his regiment was one of the first to take the field was two years old.  He had had the rare advantage of a military education, and when his comrades had marched to the front he had been detached for administrative service at the capital of his State, where it was thought that he could be most useful.  Like a bad soldier he protested, and like a good one obeyed.  In close official and personal relations with the governor of his State, and enjoying his confidence and favor, he had firmly refused promotion and seen his juniors elevated above him.  Death had been busy in his distant regiment; vacancies among the field officers had occurred again and again; but from a chivalrous feeling that war’s rewards belonged of right to those who bore the storm and stress of battle he had held his humble rank and generously advanced the fortunes of others.  His silent devotion to principle had conquered at last:  he had been relieved of his hateful duties and ordered to the front, and now, untried by fire, stood in the van of battle in command of a company of hardy veterans, to whom he had been only a name, and that name a by-word.  By none—­not even by those of his brother officers in whose favor he had waived his rights—­was his devotion to duty understood.  They were too busy to be just; he was looked upon as one who had shirked his duty, until forced unwillingly into the field.  Too proud to explain, yet not too insensible to feel, he could only endure and hope.