Destiny

The music had awakened Elsin, and presently she came a-tapping at my door, barefoot, her cardinal tightly wrapped around her, hair tumbled, drowsily rubbing her heavy lids.

"Good morning, Carus," she said sleepily. "I should dearly like to hear a good, strong sermon on damnation to-day--being sensible of my present state of sin, and of yours. Do they preach hell-fire in Rebeldom?"

"The landlord says that Hazen's mixed brigade and other troops go to service in the hay-field above the bridge," I answered, laughing. "Shall we ride thither?"

She nodded, yawning, then pulling her foot-mantle closer about her shoulders, pattered back into her chamber, and I went below and ordered our horses saddled, and breakfast to be served us as soon as might be.

And so it happened that, ere the robins had done caroling their morning songs, and the far, sweet anthems of the hermit-birds still rang in dewy woodlands, Elsin and I dismounted in Granger's hay-field just as the troops marched up in a long, dense column, the massed music of many regiments ahead, but only a single drum timing the steady tread.

All was done in perfect decorum and order. A hay-wagon was the pulpit; around it the drummers piled their drums, tier rising on tier; the ensigns draped the national colors over the humble platform, setting regimental and state standards at the corners; and I noted there some curious flags, one borne by a Massachusetts battalion, white, with a green tree on it; another, a yellow naval flag with a coiled rattlesnake; another, carried by a company of riflemen, on which was this design: 1776. XI VIRGINIA REG'T, and I knew that I was looking upon the famous regimental standard of Morgan's Rifles.