“Nor am I ashamed,” faltered Marian, “that you should see tears in mine.  Oh, God grant that he may return to us again!”

“Well,” resumed Blauvelt, after a moment of thoughtful hesitation, “I suppose I was a little morbid that night.  Perhaps one was excusable, for all knew that we were on the eve of the most desperate battle of the war.  I shall not attempt to describe the beauty of the landscape, or the fantastic shapes taken by the huge boulders that were scattered about.  My body seemed almost paralyzed with fatigue, but my mind, for a time, was preternaturally active, and noted every little detail.  Indeed, I felt a strange impulse to dwell upon and recall everything relating to this life, since the chances were so great that we might, before the close of another day, enter a different state of existence.  You see I am trying, as you requested, to give you a realistic picture.”

“That is what I wish,” said the young girl; but her cheeks were pale as she spoke.

“In the morning I was awakened by one of my men bringing me a cup of hot coffee, and when I had taken it, and later a little breakfast of raw pork and hard-tack, I felt like a new man.  Nearly all of our stragglers had joined us during the night, or in the dawn, and our regiment now mustered about two hundred and forty rifles in line, a sad change from the time when we marched a thousand strong.  But the men now were veterans, and this almost made good the difference.

“When the sun was a few hours high we were moved forward with the rest of our brigade; then, later, off to the left, and placed in position on the brow of a hill that descended steeply before us, and was covered with rocks, huge boulders, and undergrowth.  The right of our regiment was in the edge of a wood with a smoother slope before it.  I and my company had no other shelter than the rocks and boulders, which formed a marked feature of the locality, and protruded from the soil in every imaginable shape.  If we had only thrown the smaller stones together and covered them with earth we might have made, during the time we wasted, a line of defence from which we could not have been driven.  The 2d of July taught us that we had still much to learn.  As it was, we lounged about upon the grass, seeking what shade we could from the glare of another intensely hot day, and did nothing.

“A strange, ominous silence pervaded the field for hours, broken only now and then by a shell screaming through the air, and the sullen roar of the gun from which it was fired.  The pickets along our front would occasionally approach the enemy too closely, and there would be brief reports of musketry, again followed by oppressive silence.  A field of wheat below us undulated in light billows as the breeze swept it.  War and death would be its reapers.  The birds were singing in the undergrowth; the sun lighted up the rural landscape brilliantly, and it was almost impossible to believe that the scenes of