Adam, like his uncle, also felt as though a great weight had gone from his soul. The awful noise of the battle spelt the death of all that he had worked for in the months since Lincoln’s election, but the terrible sound also meant that Adam was no longer concerned with the great issues of war and peace, of slavery and emancipation, of states’ rights and Christian principle, but only with being a good neighbor to the men who had volunteered to serve his father. Adam even began to understand his father, who had never agonized over morality or wanted to weigh up the balance of his actions in an earnest attempt to guarantee a favorable verdict on the Day of Judgment. Once, when Adam had asked his father about the principles by which he lived his life, Washington Faulconer had simply laughed the question away. “You know your trouble? You think too much. I’ve never known a happy man who thought too much. Thinking just complicates affairs. Life’s like jumping a bad fence on a good horse, the more responsibility you leave to the horse the safer you’ll be, and the more you leave to life the happier you are. Worrying about principles is schoolmaster’s talk. You’ll just find you sleep better if you treat people naturally. It ain’t principle, just practicality. I never could stand listening to cant about principle. Just be yourself!” And Adam, in the sudden splintering chaos of a firefight, had at last trusted the horse to take the jump, and discovered that all his agony of conscience had evaporated in the simple pleasure of doing his duty. Adam, in a meadow whipsawed by fire, had behaved well. He might have lost the battle for his country, but he had won the war in his soul.

“Load your guns! Hold your fire!” Major Bird walked slowly behind the Legion’s companies, watching the Yankee horde gather for its next attempt. “Shoot low when they come, boys, shoot low! And well done, all of you, well done.”

The Legion, in just five minutes, had become soldiers.

“Hey, you!” The voice shouted at Ethan Ridley from the top of the central wig-wag tower. “You! Yes, you! Are you a staff officer?”

Ridley, who had been lost in thought as he galloped his horse southward, reined in. Ridley suspected that being one of Washington Faulconer’s aides was not what the signal officer meant by a staff officer, but Ridley was quick witted enough to realize he needed some excuse to be galloping alone in the rear areas of the Confederate army and so he shouted the affirmative. “Yes!”