As it passed through the fragrant streets of Winchester, women, with startled eyes, ran from open doors into the deep old gardens, and watched it over the honeysuckle hedges. Under the fluttering flags, past the long blue shadows, with the playing of the bands and the clatter of the canteens--on it went into the white dust and the sunshine. From a wide piazza, a group of schoolgirls pelted the troops with roses, and as Dan went by he caught a white bud and stuck it into his cap. He looked back laughing, to meet the flash of laughing eyes; then the gray line swept out upon the turnpike and went down the broad road through the smooth green fields, over which the sunlight lay like melted gold. Dan, walking between Pinetop and Jack Powell, felt a sudden homesickness for the abandoned camp, which they were leaving with the gay little town and the red clay forts, naked to the enemy's guns. He saw the branching apple tree, the burned-out fires, the silvery fringe of willows by the stream; and he saw the men in blue already in possession of his woodpile, broiling their bacon by the logs that Big Abel had cut. At the end of three miles the brigades abruptly halted, and he listened, looking at the ground, to an order, which was read by a slim young officer who pulled nervously at his moustache. Down the column came a single ringing cheer, and, without waiting for the command, the men pushed eagerly forward along the road. What was a forced march of thirty miles to an army that had never seen a battle? As they went on a boyish merriment tripped lightly down the turnpike; jests were shouted, a wit began to tease a mounted officer who was trying to reach the front, and somebody with a tenor voice was singing “Dixie.” A stray countryman, sitting upon the wall of loose stones, was greeted affectionately by each passing company. He was a big, stupid-looking man, with a gray fowl hanging, head downward, from his hand, and as he responded “Howdy,” in an expressionless tone, the fowl craned its long neck upward and pecked at the creeper on the wall. “Howdy, Jim!” “Howdy, Peter!” “Howdy, Luke!” sang the first line. “How's your wife?” “How's your wife's mother?” “How's your sister-in-law's uncle?” inquired the next. The countryman spat into the ditch and stared solemnly in reply, and the gray fowl, still craning its neck, pecked steadily at the leaves upon the stones.