What terrified me now was not the thought of my boots being stolen, or of being treated as a prisoner, or even the remote chance of being shot as a spy. A greater, more indefinite catastrophe was threatened by my exposure. These men were the advance company of a regiment due to sweep through the orchard and the wheatfield, explore that bit of wild ground known as the Devil’s Den and climb up Little Round Top closely followed by an entire Confederate brigade. This was the brigade which held the Round Top for several hours until artillery was brought up, artillery which dominated the entire field and gave the South victory at Gettysburg. There was no allowance for a pause, no matter how trifling, in the peach orchard, in any of the accounts I’d read or heard of. The hazard Barbara had warned so insistently against had happened. I had been discovered, and the mere discovery had altered the course of history. I tried to shrug it off. Delay of a few minutes could hardly make a significant difference. All historians agreed that the capture of the Round Tops was an inevitability; the Confederates would have been foolish to overlook them—in fact it was hardly possible they could, prominent as they were both on maps and in physical reality—and they had occupied them hours before the Federals made a belated attempt to take them. I had been unbelievably stupid to expose myself, but I had created no repercussions likely to spread beyond the next few minutes. “Said let’s see them boots. Aint got all day to wait.” A tall officer with a pointed imperial and a sandy, faintly reddish mustache whose curling ends shone waxily came up, revolver in hand. “What’s going on here?” “Just a Yank, Capn. Making a little change of footgear.” The tone was surly, almost insolent. The galloons on the officer’s sleeve told me the title was not honorary. “I’m a civilian, Captain,” I protested. “I realize I have no business here.” The captain looked at me coldly, with an expression of disdainful contempt. “Local man?” he asked. “Not exactly. I’m from York.” “Too bad. Thought you could tell me about the Yanks up ahead. Jenks, leave the civilian gentleman in full possession of his boots.” There was rage behind that sneer, a hateful anger apparently directed at me for being a civilian, at his men for their obvious lack of respect, at the battle, the world. I suddenly realized his face was intimately familiar. Irritatingly, because I could connect it with no name, place or circumstance. “How long have you been in this orchard, Mister Civilian-From-York?” The effort to identify him nagged me, working in the depths of my mind, obtruding even into that top layer which was concerned with what was going on. What was going on? _Too bad. Thought you could tell me about the Yanks up ahead. How long have you been in this orchard?_ Yanks up ahead? There werent any. There wouldnt be, for hours. “I said, ‘How long you been in this orchard?’”