Up on the mountain Mrs. Maydew made a like suggestion. “Allan, I’d like to talk to you, but I’ve got to talk to Billy an’ Dave. Violetta and Rosalinda they’re gettin’ somethin’ for those boys to eat, they look so thin an’ starved, an’ grandpap an’ the dawgs air jest sittin’ gazin’ for pure gladness!—Christianna, you entertain Allan.” “I’ve got time,” said Allan, “to go look at the school-house. That’s what I’d like to do.” The school-house was partly fallen down and the marigolds and larkspur that Allan had planted were all one with the tall grass, and a storm had broken off a great bough of the walnut tree. Allan and Christianna sat on the doorstep, and listened to a singing that was not of Thunder Run. Allan took her hand. “Christianna, I was the stupidest teacher—” That night the Second Corps lay by the James, under the great shadow of the Blue Ridge, but at dawn it took the road for Staunton and thence for the lower Valley. It went to threaten Washington and to clutch with Sheridan, who was presently sent to the Valley with orders to lay it waste—orders which he obeyed to the letter. CHAPTER XXXIV THE ROAD TO WASHINGTON Steve had had no intention whatever of rejoining the army. And yet here he was, embodied again in the Sixty-fifth, and moving, ordinary time, on Staunton! How it had happened he could hardly have related. Weariness of life on Thunder Run, where of late he had begun to dislike even Christianna Maydew,—uncertainty as to whether the Yankees might not return and sweep it clean, in which case his skin might be endangered,—a kind of craving hunger for company and variety and small adventure, coupled with memories of much of the same,—a certain pale homesickness, after all, for the regiment,—a conviction that battles were some distance off, probably clear to the other end of the Valley, and that straggling before such an event was only a matter of watching your opportunity,—all this and a ragged underweb of emotionalism brought Steve again to follow the drum. It is doubtful, however, if anything would have done so had he not by purest accident encountered his sometime colonel. Cleave, riding along the forming brigade in the first light, reached the Sixty-fifth. The regiment cheered him. He lifted his hat and came on down the line, an aide behind him. Steve, on the rim of a camp-fire built by recruits of this year who knew not the Sixty-fifth of the past, tried to duck, but his general saw him. He spoke to the aide. “Tell that man to come here.” Steve limped forward with scared eyes, a cold dew upon hands and forehead. And after all, all that the general said was, “You are nettle and dock and burr by nature and anger has no meaning in dealing with you! Are you coming again with the Sixty-fifth?” “Gawd, General! not if you think I’d better not, sir,—”