What had been in the cool gray of that summer morning a dewy
country lane, marked only by a few wagon tracks that never
encroached upon its grassy border, and indented only by the faint
footprints of a crossing fox or coon, was now, before high noon,
already crushed, beaten down, and trampled out of all semblance of
its former graciousness.  The heavy springless jolt of gun-carriage
and caisson had cut deeply through the middle track; the hoofs of
crowding cavalry had struck down and shredded the wayside vines and
bushes to bury them under a cloud of following dust, and the short,
plunging double-quick of infantry had trodden out this hideous ruin
into one dusty level chaos.  Along that rudely widened highway
useless muskets, torn accoutrements, knapsacks, caps, and articles
of clothing were scattered, with here and there the larger wrecks
of broken-down wagons, roughly thrown aside into the ditch to make
way for the living current.  For two hours the greater part of an
army corps had passed and repassed that way, but, coming or going,
always with faces turned eagerly towards an open slope on the right
which ran parallel to the lane.  And yet nothing was to be seen
there.  For two hours a gray and bluish cloud, rent and shaken with