"Four men from the Orphan Brigade with a prisoner," said Robertson.
"Advance with the prisoner," said the picket, and the four men rode
forward. Dick saw to both left and right other pickets, all in the gray
uniform of the South, and his heart grew cold within him. The hair on
his head prickled again at its roots, and it was a dreadful sensation.
What did it mean? Why these Southern pickets within cannon shot of the
Northern lines?
The men rode slowly on. They were in the deep forest, but the young
prisoner began to see many things under the leafy canopy. On his right
the dim, shadowy forms of hundreds of men lay sleeping on the grass.
On his left was a massed battery of great guns, eight in number.
Further and further they went, and there were soldiers and cannon
everywhere, but not a fire. There was no bed of coals, not a single
torch gleamed anywhere. Not all the soldiers were sleeping, but those
who were awake never spoke. Silence and darkness brooded over a great
army in gray. It was as if they marched among forty thousand phantoms,
row on row.
The whole appalling truth burst in an instant upon the boy. The
Southern army, which they had supposed was at Corinth, lay in the deep
woods within cannon shot of its foe, and not a soul in all Grant's
thousands knew of its presence there! And Buell was still far away!
It seemed to Dick that for a little space his heart stopped beating.
He foresaw it all, the terrible hammer-stroke at dawn, the rush of the
fiery South upon her unsuspecting foe, and the cutting down of brigades,
before sleep was gone from their eyes.
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