Guard came up. “What is it, Deaderick? Deserter? Spy?” “It’s not a deserter,” said Deaderick. “It’s somebody in a blue uniform beneath a grey cloak. I don’t think he’s an accredited spy—probably just an officer straying around and by chance hearing the word and acting on the spur of the moment. You’d better take him to the captain back on the road.” Another hour passed and he was relieved. Back with the outpost he lay down upon the summer earth and tried to sleep. But the two encounters of the night had set the past to ringing. He could not still the reverberations. Greenwood! Greenwood!—the place and one within it—and one within it—and one within it!... And then Marchmont, and the hopes and ambitions that once Richard Cleave had known. “A colonel leading a charge”—and the highest service in sight—and a man’s knowledge of his own ability.... Philip Deaderick turned and lay with his face to the earth, his arm across his eyes. He fought it out, the thousandth inner battle, then turned again and lay, looking sideways along the misty night. In the distance a cock crew. The chill air, the unearthly quiet told the hour before dawn. The east grew pale, then into it crept faint streaks of purple. The birds in the woodland began incessantly to _cheep! cheep!_ The mist was very heavy. It hid the road, swathed all the horizon. Reveille sounded: the bugler, mounted on a hill behind the guns, looked, in the moody light, like some Brocken spectre. Far and wide, full at hand, thin and elfin in the distance, rang other reveilles. They rang through the streets of Brandy Station and through the surrounding forests, fields, and dales, waking Jeb Stuart’s thousands from their sleep. Horse Artillery stood up, rubbed its eyes, and made a speedy toilet. In the shortest possible time the men were cooking breakfast. Cooking breakfast being at no time in the Army of Northern Virginia a prolonged operation, they were to be found in an equally short space of time seated about mess-fires eating it. It was yet dank and chilly dawn, the east reddening but not so very red, the mist hanging heavy, closing all perspectives. Horse Artillery lifted its tin cup, filled with steaming mock-coffee, to its lips—_Crack! crack!_ came the rifle shots from the Beverly Ford woods. Horse Artillery set down its cup. “What’s that? What are all those pickets firing that way for? Good Lord, if there’s going to be a surprise, why couldn’t they wait until after breakfast? _Get the horses and limber up!_—All right, Captain—” Vedettes, driven in, came galloping up the road. “Blue cavalry! No end of blue cavalry! Column crossing, and a whole lot of them up in the woods! Nobody could see them, the mist was so heavy! You slow old Artillery, you’d better look out!”