Twice Dan had to get down and push impediments aside; fence rails, and other things. There were a lot of playing cards on the ground, and crackers all soaked by the rain, drying into the trampled grass once more … flaky. Perhaps they were manna. He had always thought that manna would look like crackers. He passed opposite the Weikert house. The farmer was out in his dooryard, wandering aimlessly amid the scattered blue and gray bundles. Dan kept on, south, in a narrow glade between the creek and the steeper ridge. He passed a few more living soldiers, but they did not offer to stop him. Probably I don’t look like a robber of the dead, he thought. And I did not keep the Sketch-Book. I threw it away, away.

Little Round Top rose up, to the left. It was carpeted with dummies of blue and butternut, but mostly butternut. God had had a whole barrelful of dummies, and he had dumped them out on top of the rocky hill; they went tumbling and rolling down the steep, smooth sides, lodging here and there among the rocks; adhesive dummies, they lay fat and contented on some of the sheerest slopes. Now Dan headed the horse west in the lane which cut across, all the way to the Sherfy farm. I walked this, he thought, that day so long ago. Met Elijah with the Niede girl, in a cut-under buggy. That was the day Irene said Dan. Desire you, desire you—

That wounded Fisher said wheat. He was sure it was wheat, near the bone-built hill.

The wheels splashed through thickening puddles. They went over Plum Run; it had been very high, and was gone down into its banks again, murmuring feebly. On each side swept a fly-ridden mass of rusting guns and old clothing and weeds and loose shoes, and more playing cards and crackers. The fringe of bright wheat glimmered ahead—its fences were thrown far and wide, and it had been harvested by a million hoofs, beaten and pounded and mauled this way and that. In some places there were clumps of it still standing, proud, catching the sharp sunshine. Steam and birds went up from the bloating horses.

Dan tied the sorrel to a gashed plum tree. He began to walk through the wheat, peering cautiously, watching where he stepped. No use, he thought—I can’t make a thing out of all these colored people, blistered as they are. Why do they stick out their tongues at me? But when I talked to Fisher, I felt that I dared not wait to come.