United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
Was memory juggling with her senses, or was that really his voice
she heard in command, in a field to her left? She turned a swift,
startled look in that direction, and saw a Sergeant marching a large
squad at quick time to join a heavy “detail.” His back was toward
her, but his figure and bodily carriage were certainly those of
Harry Glen. But before she could make certain the squad was merged
with the “detail,” to the obliteration of all individuality, and
the whole mass disappeared around the hill.
She rode on to the top of the rim of hills which encircle that
most picturesque of Southern cities, and stopped for a moment for
a farewell to the stronghold of her friends, whose friendly cover
she was abandoning to venture, weak and weaponless, into the camp
of her enemies.
Above her the great black guns of a heavy fort pointed their sinister
muzzles down the Murfreesboro road, with fearful suggestiveness of
the dangers to be encountered there.
She remembered Lot's wife, but could not resist the temptation to
take a one backward look. She saw as grand a landscape picture as
the world affords.
Serenely throned upon the hill that dominated the whole of the lovely
valley of the Cumberland, stood the beautiful Capitol of Tennessee.
Ionic porticos and graceful Corinthian columns of dazzling white
limestone rose hundreds of feet above the fountains and magnolia-shaded
terraces that crowned the hill--still more hundreds of feet above
the densely packed roofs and spires of the city crowded upon
the hill's rocky sides. It was like some fine and pure old Greek
temple, standing on a romantic headland, far above the murk and
toil of sordid striving. But over the symmetrical pile floated a
banner that meant to the world all that was signified even by the
banners which Greece folded and laid away in eternal rest thousands
of years ago.
At the foot of the hill the Cumberland, clear as when it descended
from its mountains five hundred miles away, flowed between its
high, straight walls of limestone, spanned by cobweb-like bridges,
and bore on its untroubled breast a great fleet of high-chimneyed,
white-sided transports, and black, sullen gunboats. Miles away to
her left she saw the trains rushing into Nashville, unrolling as
they came along black and white ribbons against the sky.
“They're coming from the North,” she said, with an involuntary
sigh; “they're coming from home.”
She touched her mare's flank with the whip and sped on.
She soon reached the outer line of guards, by whom she was halted,
with a demand for her pass.
She produced the one furnished her, which was signed by Gen.
Rosencrans. While the Sergeant was inspecting it it occured to
her that now was the time to begin the role of a young woman with
rebellious proclivities.
“Is this the last guard-line I will have to pass?” she asked.
“Yes'm,” answered the Sergeant.
“You're quite sure?”
“Yes'm.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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