Cary’s mind ranged far from the comfortless top of Kennesaw. First of all and oftenest it looked southward, across the forest, to where, in a farmhouse near Smyrna Church, Désirée slept or waked. It paused there, suspended, watching her where she lay, then passed from the quiet room and swept in widening circles around the core of life.... This Georgian battle-ground! Fifty days now of a great strategic campaign—Dalton and the spring-time far behind—Atlanta and the pitched battle that must toss victory into this camp or into that drawing nearer. The Army of Tennessee, stanch and cheerful even in the rain-filled rifle-pits on Kennesaw; gaunt, heroic, like its brother the Army of Northern Virginia.... Not the Georgia battle-grounds alone;—all battle-fields—all the South one battle-field, fringed and crossed with weary, weary, weary marches! Suddenly he saw how red were the rivers and how many houses were blackened ruins. There was a great loneliness, and he thought he saw children straying, lost, across the plain. Edward sat up and rested his forehead on his hands. “What is it all for?” he thought. “It is absurd.” The sky was clear to-night. He looked up at the Great Bear and the Dragon. “We are in a world of contradictories. There is the heroic, the piteous, and the beautiful, there is a loud and sweet music,—and yet it is all in the service of the King of the Dwarfs, of a gnome with a gnome’s brain.... How to change the service?” In the cold hour before the dawn, he slept, to be presently awakened by the sound of the pickets’ pieces and a night attack. Half an hour’s fighting rolled it back, down Kennesaw, but when it was done the men were kept awake lest the wave should return. They talked, behind the breastworks, while the stars faded. “Wish it was a false alarm! Wish I’d wake up and find myself asleep.” “O God, yes! In my bed at home.” “Talking about false alarms—Did you ever hear about Spaulding?” “What Spaulding?—No.”