A Son of the Gods

A breezy day and a sunny landscape. An opencountry to right and left and forward; behind, a wood. In the edge of this wood, facing the open but notventuring into it, long lines of troops halted. Thewood is alive with them, and full of confused noises: the occasional rattle of wheels as a battery of artillerygoes into position to cover the advance; the hum andmurmur of the soldiers talking; a sound ofinnumerable feet in the dry leaves that strew theinterspaces among the trees; hoarse commands ofofficers. Detached groups of horsemen are well infront-not altogether exposed-many of themintently regarding the crest of a hill a mile away in thedirection of the interrupted advance. For this powerfularmy, moving in battle order through a forest, has metwith a formidable obstacle-the open country. Thecrest of that gentle hill a mile away has a sinister look;it says, Beware! Along it runs a stone wall extending toleft and right a great distance. Behind the wall is ahedge; behind the hedge are seen the tops of trees inrather straggling order. Among the trees-what? It isnecessary to know.3Yesterday, and for many days and nights previously, we were fighting somewhere; always there wascannonading, with occasional keen rattlings ofmusketry, mingled with cheers, our own or theenemy's, we seldom knew, attesting some temporaryadvantage. This morning at daybreak the enemy wasgone. We have moved forward across his earthworks, across which we have so often vainly attempted tomove before, through the debris of his abandonedcamps, among the graves of his fallen, into the woodsbeyond. How curiously we regarded everything! How odd itall seemed! Nothing appeared quite familiar; the mostcommonplace objects-an old saddle, a splinteredwheel, a forgotten canteen everything relatedsomething of the mysterious personality of thosestrange men who had been killing us. The soldiernever becomes wholly familiar with the conception ofhis foes as men like himself; he cannot divest himselfof the feeling that they are another order of beings, differently conditioned, in an environment notaltogether of the earth. The smallest vestiges of themrivet his attention and engage his inter