“Praise His name, yes,” Blythe lied glibly.

“I didn’t hear,” Jackson snapped and cupped a hand to his ear. Years of artillery work had deadened the General’s hearing.

“Praise His name, yes!” Blythe shouted.

“We are a Godly nation, Captain, and a righteous army,” Jackson growled. “We cannot be defeated. Fight with that assurance in your heart.”

“I shall, sir, and amen,” Blythe responded, then held out his hand, which the general, with some surprise at the gesture, finally clasped. “God bless you, sir,” Blythe said as he shook Jackson’s hand, then he turned and walked back to Starbuck. “See?” Blythe chuckled. “Easy as feeding crumbs to a bird.”

“So what did you say to him?”

“I told him I was one of God’s anointed, told him I prayed for him daily, and offered him God’s blessing.”

“You ain’t a saved Christian, Billy Tumlin,” Starbuck said sourly. “You’re nothing but a miserable sinner.”

“We have all sinned, Starbuck,” Blythe said earnestly, “and fallen short of the glory of God.”

“Don’t preach to me, for Christ’s sake, I’ve had my bellyful of preaching.”

Blythe laughed. He was pleased with himself for having shaken the great Jackson’s hand, and the tale would be a good boast in the comfortable days after he had crossed the lines. He was pleased, too, for having fooled Jackson into thinking he was with a fellow Christian. Be all things to all men, that was Billy Blythe’s belief, but make sure you profit from the deceptions. “So what happens now?” he asked Starbuck.

“What do you think? We shoot the hell out of those poor sons of bitches, they surrender, then we go and shoot the hell out of the rest of the sorry bastards.” Starbuck checked suddenly, arrested by the distant sound of gunfire. It was very distant, much too muted and far away to be the guns on Harper’s Ferry’s farther side. The same distant grumbling had trembled across the sky the previous evening, just before the sun had set in a blaze of western scarlet, and Starbuck had climbed to the ridge top to see a small billow of whiteness on the far northeastern skyline. That far whiteness, which had been touched pink by the dying day, could have been an errant wisp of cloud, except that the noise had betrayed what it truly was—gunfire. A skirmish or battle was being waged deep inside Maryland. Starbuck shuddered and was glad he was here and not there.

The last mist shredded from the valleys to reveal the small town of Harper’s Ferry huddled at the point between the merging rivers. The fame of the place had somehow persuaded Starbuck that it would prove a large town, almost the size of Richmond maybe, but in truth it was a tiny place. It must have once been a pleasant, tree-shaded village built on a spur of hill that dropped to the banks of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, though now many of the buildings were charred ruins out of which brick chimney stacks reared gaunt. An undamaged church flew a flag that, when Starbuck borrowed a gunner’s binoculars, he saw to be the British flag. “I thought those bastards were on our side,” he told the gunner officer.