THE cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awak-ened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors.It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares.A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile camp-fires set in the low brows of distant hills.
Once a certain tall soldier developed virtues and went resolutely to wash a shirt.He came flying back from a brook waving his garment bannerlike.He was swelled with a tale he had heard from a reliable friend, who had heard it from a truthful cavalryman, who had heard it from his trustworthy brother, one of the order-lies at division headquarters.He adopted the important air of a herald in red and gold.
"We're goin' t' move t' morrah--sure," he said pompously to a group in the company street."We're goin' 'way up the river, cut across, an' come around in behint 'em."To his attentive audience he drew a loud and elaborate plan of a very brilliant campaign.
When he had finished, the blue-clothed men scattered into small arguing groups between the rows of squat brown huts.A negro teamster who had been dancing upon a cracker box with the hilarious encouragement of twoscore soldiers was deserted.He sat mournfully down.Smoke drifted lazily from a multitude of quaint chim-neys.
"It's a lie! that's all it is--a thunderin' lie!"said another private loudly.His smooth face was flushed, and his hands were thrust sulkily into his trousers' pockets.He took the matter as an affront to him."I don't believe the derned old army's ever going to move.We're set.I've got ready to move eight times in the last two weeks, and we ain't moved yet."The tall soldier felt called upon to defend the truth of a rumor he himself had intro-duced.He and the loud one came near to fight-ing over it.
A corporal began to swear before the assem-blage.He had just put a costly board floor in his house, he said.During the early spring he had refrained from adding extensively to the comfort of his environment because he had felt that the army might start on the march at any moment.Of late, however, he had been im-pressed that they were in a sort of eternal camp.
Many of the men engaged in a spirited debate.
One outlined in a peculiarly lucid manner all the plans of the commanding general.He was op-posed by men who advocated that there were other plans of campaign.They clamored at each other, numbers making futile bids for the pop-ular attention.Meanwhile, the soldier who had fetched the rumor bustled about with much importance.He was continually assailed by questions.
"What's up, Jim?"
"Th' army's goin' t' move."
"Ah, what yeh talkin' about? How yeh know it is?""Well, yeh kin b'lieve me er not, jest as yeh like.I don't care a hang."There was much food for thought in the man-ner in which he replied.He came near to con-vincing them by disdaining to produce proofs.
They grew excited over it.
There was a youthful private who listened with eager ears to the words of the tall soldier and to the varied comments of his comrades.
After receiving a fill of discussions concerning marches and attacks, he went to his hut and crawled through an intricate hole that served it as a door.He wished to be alone with some new thoughts that had lately come to him.
He lay down on a wide bank that stretched across the end of the room.In the other end, cracker boxes were made to serve as furniture.
They were grouped about the fireplace.A pic-ture from an illustrated weekly was upon the log walls, and three rifles were paralleled on pegs.
Equipments hunt on handy projections, and some tin dishes lay upon a small pile of firewood.Afolded tent was serving as a roof.The sunlight, without, beating upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade.A small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the cluttered floor.
The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay chimney and wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks made end-less threats to set ablaze the whole establishment.
The youth was in a little trance of astonish-ment.So they were at last going to fight.On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a battle, and he would be in it.For a time he was obliged to labor to make himself believe.He could not accept with assurance an omen that he was about to mingle in one of those great affairs of the earth.
He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life--of vague and bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire.In visions he had seen himself in many struggles.He had imagined peoples secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess.But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotches on the pages of the past.He had put them as things of the bygone with his thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles.There was a portion of the world's history which he had regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought, had been long gone over the horizon and had disappeared forever.
From his home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in his own country with distrust.
It must be some sort of a play affair.He had long despaired of witnessing a Greeklike struggle.
Such would be no more, he had said.Men were better, or more timid.Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grappling in-stinct, or else firm finance held in check the pas-sions.
He had burned several times to enlist.Tales of great movements shook the land.They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in them.He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it all.
His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures extravagant in color, lurid with breathless deeds.
