The Sixty-fifth kept its cartridges dry, held its muskets high. It had crossed into Maryland with song and joke and laughter, stepping easily through water to the mid-thigh, clear water, sparkling in the sun. It returned into Virginia through a high and stormy water, beneath a midnight sky. The sky of its fortunes, too, was dark. There was no singing to-night; each man, breasting the flood, needed all his wits merely to cross. The red light beat upon the Sixty-fifth going down from the Maryland shore, rank after rank, entering the water in a column of three. Rank by rank, the darkness swallowed it up, officers and men, colonel, lieutenant-colonel, captains, lieutenants, the chaplain, the surgeons, the noncommissioned officers, all the men, Thunder Run men, men from the mountainous Upper Valley counties,—all the Sixty-fifth, rank by rank dipped out of the light into the darkness. The darkness swallowed the regiment, then the darkness gave it again to the light on the Virginia shore. Up to the gate of the fortress, through the red flare of torches, came the Sixty-fifth. A man with a great rich, deep voice, broke into song in the night-time, in the wind and rain, as he came up beneath the sycamores. He sang “Dixie,” and the Sixty-fifth sang it with him. All night, endlessly across the river, out of light into darkness, then into light again, came the slowly unwinding ribbon of the regiments. All night the Second Corps was crossing by the ford as all night the First was crossing by the unstable bridge of boats. In the grey morning there crossed A.P. Hill and the Third. The last brigade was Lane’s North Carolinians. It made the passage, and then Stuart drew his thousands steadily to the waterside. Meade’s advance, Kilpatrick and Buford, saw from the hill-tops the river dark with swimming horsemen. CHAPTER XVII BREAD CAST ON WATER Prison X had a catechism which it taught all the newly arrived. _Question._ Where are we? _Answer._ In the North. _Q._ Do we find the North interesting? _Ans._ We do not. _Q._ Where is the country of our preference? _Ans._ South of the Potomac. _Q._ Do we find this prison pleasing? _Ans._ We do not. _Q._ Have we an object in life? _Ans._ We have. _Q._ What is it? _Ans._ To get out. _Q._ Again? _Ans._ To get out. _Q._ Again? _Ans._ To get out—and stay out. _Q._ Both are difficult? _Ans._ Both are difficult. Q. Have all apparent ways been tried? _Ans._ All apparent ways have been tried. _Q._ Uprisings, tunnels, sawing window bars, bribing guards, taking a corpse’s place, etc., have all been tried? _Ans._ They have all been tried. _Q._ And they have failed? _Ans._ They have failed. _Q._ What is to be done? _Ans._ I do not know. _Q._ Have you an object in life? _Ans._ I have an object in life. _Q._ What is it?