Hilary remembered that moment always. It meant so much to him. Every detail of the scene was painted on his memory years and years afterward as if but yesterday it was aglow--the evening air that was so still, so filled with mellow, illuminated color, so imbued with peace and fragrance and soft content, such as one could imagine may pervade the realms of Paradise, was yet the vehicle for the limning of this warlike picture. The great purple mountains loomed high around; through the green valley now crept a dun-tinted shadow more like a deepening of the rich verdant color of the foliage than a visible transition toward the glooms of the night; the stream was steel-gray and full of the white flickers of foam; further up the water reflected a flare of camp-fires, broadly aglow, with great sprangles of fluctuating flame and smoke setting the blue dusk a-quiver with alternations of light and shade; there were the dim rows of horses, some still sturdily champing their provender, others dully drowsing, and one nearer at hand, a noble charger, standing with uplifted neck and thin, expanded nostrils and full lustrous eyes, gazing over the winding way, the vacant road by which they had come. Beyond were the figures of the soldiers; a few, who had already finished their supper, were rolled in their blankets with their feet to the fire in a circle like the spokes of a wheel to the hub. There, pillowed on their saddles, would they sleep all night under the pulsating white stars, for these swift raids were unencumbered with baggage, and the pitching of a tent meant a longer stay than the bivouac of a single night. Others were still at their supper, broiling rashers of bacon on the coals, or toasting a bird or chicken, split and poised on a pointed cedar stick before the flames. Socially disposed groups were laughing and talking beside the flaring brands, the firelight gleaming in their eyes, half shaded by the wide, drooping brims of their broad hats, and flashing on their white teeth as they rehearsed the incidents of the day or made merry with old scores. Now and then a stave of song would rise sonorously into the air as a big bass voice trolled out a popular melody--it was the first time Hilary had ever heard the sentimental, melancholy measures of “The Sun’s Low Down the Sky, Lorena.” Sometimes, by way of symphony, a tentative staccato variation of the theme would issue from the strings of a violin, borrowed from a neighboring dwelling, which a young trooper, seated leaning against the bole of a great tree, was playing with a deft, assured touch. Hilary often saw such scenes afterward, but not even the reality was ever so vivid as the recollection of this fire-lit perspective glimmering behind the figure of the guard.