That's
our left. From our front the ground slopes down some forty feet or so,
and about a mile away the Rebs hold the town seminary and a long low rise
facing us."
"Thank you, that seems pretty clear. There is firing over beyond the
cemetery?"
"Yes, the skirmishers get cross now and then. The road seems clear, sir."
Orders rang out and the guns rattled up the pike like some monstrous
articulated insect, all encumbering wagons being swept aside to make way
for the privileged guns.
"You are to park here, sir, on the open between this and the Taneytown
road. There is a brook--a creek."
"Thanks, that is clear."
The ground thus chosen lay some hundred yards behind the low crest held
midway of our line by the Second Corps, whence the ground fell away in a
gentle slope. The space back of our line was in what to a layman's eye
would have seemed the wildest confusion of wagons, ambulances, ammunition
mules, cattle, and wandering men. It was slowly assuming some order as
the Provost Guard, dusty, despotic and cross, ranged the wagons, drove
back stragglers, and left wide lanes for the artillery to move at need to
the front.
The colonel spent some hours in getting his guns placed and in seeing
that no least detail was lacking. With orders about instant readiness,
with a word of praise here, of sharp criticism there, he turned away a
well-contented man and walked up the slope in search of the headquarters.
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