"Fortunately, none of these things needs trouble us. They make no difference whatever in our personal duty. Virginia has proclaimed her withdrawal from the Union, under the declared purpose of the Union to make war upon her for doing so. It is for us to fight in Virginia's cause as manfully as we can, leaving God, or the Fates, or whatever else it is that presides over human affairs, to take care of the result. "Come! The time is passing; we must hurry in order to catch that train which represents the modern progress that is destined to ride over us and crush us. Good-bye, old Virginia life! God bless you for a good old life! May we live as worthily in the new, if we survive to see the new!" VIII _A RED FEATHER_ The sun shone with the fervent heat of noonday in mid-July, as the long line of cannon and caissons came lumbering down the incline of the roadway that leads from the mountainside into the little railway village. The breath of the guns was still offensively sulphurous, for there had been no time in which to cleanse them since their work of yesterday. The officers and non-commissioned officers on their horses, and the cannoniers who rode upon the ammunition-chests, were powder-grimed and dusty--for there had been no opportunity on this hurried march for those ablutions that all soldiers so eagerly delight in. There were no shouted commands given, for this battery had been three times under fire, and one of the first things an officer learns in real war is not to shout his orders except when the din of battle renders shouting necessary. Three months ago on parade the captain of this battery would have bellowed, "Forward into battery!" by way of impressing his importance upon the lookers-on. Now that he had learned to be in earnest, he merely turned to his bugler, and said, as if in a parlour, "Forward into battery, then halt." A little musical snatch on the bugle did the rest, and with the precision of a piece of mechanism, the guns were moved into place, each with its caissons at a fixed distance in the rear, and the command, "At ease," was followed by a stable-call, in obedience to which the drivers set to work to feed and groom their horses. For while men may be allowed to go grimed and dirty on campaign, the horses at least must be curried and rubbed and sponged into perfect health and comfort whenever there is opportunity. Here at the little railway station were assembled all the womankind from a dozen miles round about. These had come to look upon the Army of the Shenandoah, with which Johnston, after several days of skirmishing in the valley with the Federals under Patterson, was hurrying onward to Manassas to join Beauregard there, in the battle which was so obviously at hand.