The line fell in, the men getting to their horses
and mounting in silence; the Colonel put himself at their head
and gave the order of march, and the dark line turned in the darkness,
crossed the little plateau between the smouldering camp-fires
and the spectral caissons with the harness hanging beside them,
and slowly entered the dim charcoal-burner's track. Not a word was spoken
as they moved off. They might all have been phantoms. Only,
the sergeant in the rear, as he crossed the little breastwork
which ran along the upper side and marked the boundary of the little camp,
half turned and glanced at the dying fires, the low, newly made mounds
in the corner, the abandoned caissons, and the empty redoubt, and said,
slowly, in a low voice to himself,
"Well, by God!"
The Gray Jacket of "No. 4"
My meeting with him was accidental. I came across him
passing through "the square". I had seen him once or twice on the street,
each time lurching along so drunk that he could scarcely stagger,
so that I was surprised to hear what he said about the war.
He was talking to someone who evidently had been in the army himself,
but on the other side -- a gentleman with the loyal-legion button in his coat,
and with a beautiful scar, a sabre-cut across his face.
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