Under Fire: A Tale of the Shenandoah Valley — page 128: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

¢ ee bei - we Ye ON THE EVE OF BATTLE. 424 through the underbrush, as though a multitude was marching along the front. This information caused some precautions to be taken, but no reconnaissance was sent out. The truth is, a serious attack by Early was not dreamed of, and the main army slumbered on, wholly unsuspicious of danger. All this time the steady columns were sweeping on through the gloom, now pushing through the dripping trees, and now fording a stream—skirting the Union position for miles—till at length, an hour before daybreak, Early’s troops, shivering with the cold, stood within six hundred yards of their enemy’s camp. It was now the morning of the nineteenth. This was to be a memorable day—one to be written in characters of blood upon the pages of American his- tory. —. | Captain Royal Chetwood was with the army now. Although he had ostensibly acted with the cavalry, yet, he was now, as was his regiment, a part of the © infantry force under Crook, the corps destined to re- ceive the first shock of battle on this memorable day. The gallant Pennsylvanian had heard nothing from his young friend, ‘‘Loyal Mose,’’ since the day of their meeting in the farmer’s house, when a portion of Mosby’s band made that sudden attack. He believed that Bluff had escaped death, and a would yet appear upon the field of strife. , On the night of the eighteenth, Captain Chet- wood’s command was resting peacefully under the autumnal stars, little dreaming of the fate in store for many of them ere the rising of another sun. It was long past midnight when Captain Chetwood had left his tent and wandered forth into the night. Somehow, he could not sleep. Restless, full of uneasy thoughts, he resolved to comicbooks.co