“They’ve put our set in with about seven hundred more. We’re the Twenty-sixth, now. The Gettysburg boys make up Company A … The train got off the track at Swift Run; I shouldn’t wonder if it was the doings of Copperheads.”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Not to notice. The balance of the Twenty-sixth will be here in the morning.”

Dan asked, “What’s the matter with your voice?”

“Matter with it? I don’t know—drilling, like as not. We’ve been having the devil’s own time: muster wasn’t completed until Monday, and we left Harrisburg yesterday, to feel out the rebels over west.”

“You mean—” It was impossible; a patently childish design which had somehow found its way into the affairs of war. “You mean that your regiment had only two days of training, and now you’re going against the—enemy?”

Elijah thudded his musket upon the ground. “Well, you know our own bunch—most of Company A—has been drilling for months. Of course, some of the rest—”

They stood there, mute blots of darkness, staring through the gloom. “Can you stop out at the house with me and have a bite to eat?” Bale asked. “We’ll get up a bottle of sherry—”

“No, I’m sorry. If I can get leave, I’ll go over home to see Ma. I don’t suppose Mealy is in town.”

“You could drive out there,” Dan said, “but they’d all be a-bed.”

“Probably. Well, she’ll probably hear about us and come in, in the morning. I don’t know how soon we’ll move out of town—not till the rest of the regiment gets here.”

Again they shook hands. Dan left Huddlestone in front of the grocery store; in the wan light of the windows he could see that Elijah’s uniform was new and stiff, though already muddy, and he wore a broad splash of chevrons on his sleeve.

“You’re a sergeant?”

“Well, the men think so.” Hud’s drooping mustache twitched; he seemed leering as he grinned. “Goodnight, Dan. Get down early in the morning; we may march before very late.”

Under the direction of a bearded officer, squads of the tired men were trying to stack arms in front of the shop platforms. The muskets kept sliding down with a bristling clatter. “No. No!” the lieutenant was growling. “Hook each over each. Like this. You, there, private—hold yours. Now you lean yours on. Now—you.” Bale could hear the clinking and thud of their guns, hear the hollowness of spoken words, all the way to the little bridge over Stevens Run.