Allan Gold was not marching with the Sixty-fifth. He was half a day ahead, scouting. Around stretched the rich woods of the western slope of the Blue Ridge, below lay the wooded valley of the Shenandoah. He saw the road to Front Royal, and before him the Massanuttens closed the view. He had been travelling since sun-up, and now, at noon, he was willing enough to camp awhile. He chose the bottom of a knife-blade ravine where was a trickle of water beneath laurels in bloom. The sun came down between leaves of ash and hickory; the topmost branches just stirred, bees buzzed, birds sang far and wide. He was quite alone with the earth. First he set his rifle against a hickory, and then he gathered a very small heap of twigs and dead leaves, and then he set fire to these. From his haversack he took a metal plate, one side of a burst canteen. It made a small but splendid griddle and he set it on the coals. Then out came a fragment of bacon and two pieces of hard-tack. He fried the bacon, then crumbled the hard-tack in the gravy and made “coosh.” Then, with slow enjoyment, he ate the bacon and the coosh. When the last atom was gone, he lifted the griddle, handling it with a thick glove of leaves, plunged it in the streamlet, washed it clean, and restored it, sun-dried, to his haversack. This done, he took out a small bag of tobacco and his pipe, filled the latter, and with his back against the hickory began to smoke. He was happy, alone with the earth whom he understood. Long and blond and strong, the grey of his clothing weatherbeaten until it was like in hue to the russet last year’s leaves on which he lay, he looked a man of an old-time tale, Siegfried, perhaps, quiet and happy in the deep, deep forest. When the pipe was empty, he cleaned it and restored it to his pocket. This done, he routed out the side of the haversack devoted to apparel, comb, toothbrush, and—when he could get it—soap, together with other small articles. He had a little New Testament in which he conscientiously read at least once a week. Now he took this up. Between its pages lay an unopened letter. He uttered an exclamation. It had come to him at Fredericksburg, an hour before marching. He had had no time to read it then, and he had put it here. Then had come the breaking camp, the going ahead—he could hardly tell whether he had forgotten it or had simply taken up the notion that it had been read. He laughed. “Well, Aunt Sairy, it never happened before!” He opened it now, settled his shoulders squarely against the hickory, and read—