“I?” said Cleave, “I will speak to your colonel about you. For the rest you can fire a musket.” He smiled grimly. “Still that sore foot? Has it been sore all this time?” “General, it’s been sorer!—’n’ if you’d tell the men that they shan’t act some of them so cold ’n’ some of them so hot toward me?—’n’ I saved the life of them all only day before yesterday,” Steve whimpered, “’n’ yours, too, General.” “Thank you,” said Cleave with gravity. “Fall in, now—and remember that your Captain’s eye will be on you.” _Fall in!—Fall in!—Fall in! ... Column forward!_ Down the Valley Pike marched the Second Corps. Lexington—Staunton—Harrisonburg—on and on upon the old, familiar road. “Howdy, Valley Pike,” said the Second Corps. “Howdy, Old Lady! Missed us, haven’t you? We’ve missed you. We’ve thought of you—thought of you in all kinds of tight places!— “‘Should auld acquaintance be forgot And days of auld lang syne—’” “Don’t seem to us you’re looking well—ragged and lonely and burned up and hewed down—cheer up! “‘We’ll take a cup of kindness yet—’” Miles and miles and miles of old-time heat and dust and thirst! _Tramp, tramp!_—_Tramp, tramp!_ Miles and miles. “There never were enough springs and streams on this road and old Miss War’s done drunk those up!—O Lord, for a river of buttermilk!—” The dust weighted down pokeberry and stickweed, alder, blackberry and milkweed. The old trim walls bounding the Valley Pike were now mere ruinous heaps of stones. The thousands of marching feet, the wheels, the hoofs furred these with dust. There were no wooden fences now of any description; there were few wayside trees, few wayside buildings. There were holes where the fence posts had been, and there were stumps of trees and there were blackened foundations where houses had been, and all these were yellowed and softened with dust. A long, thick, and moving wall, the dust accompanied the Second Corps. The Second Corps was used to it, used to it in its eyes, its throat, down its neck, in its shoes, all over. The Second Corps was used to poor shoes and to half shoes—used to uniforms whose best day was somewhere in past ages—used to hunger—used to thirst, thirst, thirst—used to twenty miles, twenty miles in heat and glare, or in mud and rain, or in ice or snow—used to the dust cloud, used to the storm, used to marching and marching, used to battling, used to a desperate war in a desperate land, used to singing, used to joking, used to despairing, used to hoping—used to dusty marches! It was a long time since the dusty march by Ashby’s Gap across to First Manassas. New Market, Mount Jackson, Edenburg, Woodstock, Strasburg, Middletown, Kernstown—on the second of July they came to Winchester. Sigel was at Martinsburg beyond.