Scattered about upon the ground now slowly narrowing by the encroachment
of this awful march to water, were certain articles to which, in the
leader's mind, were coupled no significant associations: an occasional
blanket, tightly rolled lengthwise, doubled and the ends bound together
with a string; a heavy knapsack here, and there a broken rifle--such
things, in short, as are found in the rear of retreating troops, the
"spoor" of men flying from their hunters. Everywhere near the creek,
which here had a margin of lowland, the earth was trodden into mud by
the feet of men and horses. An observer of better experience in the use
of his eyes would have noticed that these footprints pointed in both
directions; the ground had been twice passed over--in advance and in
retreat. A few hours before, these desperate, stricken men, with their
more fortunate and now distant comrades, had penetrated the forest in
thousands. Their successive battalions, breaking into swarms and
re-forming in lines, had passed the child on every side--had almost
trodden on him as he slept. The rustle and murmur of their march had not
awakened him. Almost within a stone's throw of where he lay they had
fought a battle; but all unheard by him were the roar of the musketry,
the shock of the cannon, "the thunder of the captains and the shouting."
He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with
perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial
environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead
who had died to make the glory.

The fire beyond the belt of woods on the farther side of the creek,
reflected to earth from the canopy of its own smoke, was now suffusing
the whole landscape. It transformed the sinuous line of mist to the
vapor of gold. The water gleamed with dashes of red, and red, too, were
many of the stones protruding above the surface. But that was blood; the