Their horses, which men had been holding near the musicians, were hastily brought forward, and the general and his staff sprang into the saddle and trotted over toward the road. The end of the column was in view, with its disorder of servants, baggage-carriers, soldiers who had lost their places, and behind, the looming canvas covers of ambulance-wagons and the train. Into the thick of this straggling mass General Boyce, sitting splendidly erect and with a bold smile on his rosy-cheeked face, spurred his way, and the staff in turn clattered after him down out of sight. The brigade had passed, and the band stopped playing. Files of mules, heavily laden with stacks of cartridge-boxes, were still pouring along the road and being whacked down the ravine path; but the big wagons, as they came, halted, and were drawn off into the field to the left. Tall poles were taken out and set up. Coils of rope were unwound, stakes driven, and huge cylinders of canvas unrolled on the grass. Soon there arose the gray outlines of tents--one dominating structure fully thirty yards long, and around it, like little mushrooms about the parent stool, a number of smaller tents, some square, some conical. The drummer-boy, his task ended, sauntered over with his companions toward the tents. He paused to watch the heavy folds of canvas being hauled up to the ridge-pole of the big one. In one way it recalled those preparations on the old circus-ground at home which he used to watch with such zest. But in another way it was strangely different. While some men tugged at the ropes or drove in stakes for the guy-lines, others were busy bringing from the wagons rolls of blankets and huge trusses of straw. Even before the roof was secure scores of rude beds were being spread on the trampled grass underneath. Bearded and spectacled men, dressed after the fashion of officers, yet clearly not soldiers at all, were directing everything now. Among them, here and there, flitted young women, clad also in a sort of uniform, who seemed busiest of all. No, this was decidedly different from a circus tent. The thunder of the batteries on the other side of the ridge was alone enough to throw a solemn meaning over this long, barn-like house of ropes and cloths. It was the brigade hospital-tent, and the hundreds of active hands at work could hardly hope to have it ready before it was needed. It was the morning of the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness. The men of Boyce's brigade knew only vaguely, by hearsay, of what had happened on that terrible yesterday. They themselves, forming the rear-guard of the great army, had been nearly the last to cross the Rapidan on the swinging pontoon bridge of Germania ford. They had had a night's forced march; a two hours' nap in the open starlight; a hasty bite of rations at half-past three in the morning, and now this plunge in the chilly twilight of sunrise down into the unknown.