Under Fire: A Tale of the Shenandoah Valley — page 129: what you’re looking at

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

122 ON THE EVE OF BATTLE, take a turn in the night air, and banish his pmo feelings if possible. In a little time he gained a spot just without the line, and stood in the cover of some trees. Darkness everywhere, a dense, damp fog hanging over the hills. The solemn stillness of the night was oppressive. The captain leaned against a tree and listened. It seemed as though he would hear the hoot of an owl, or the cry of a night-hawk, as had often been the case, when he stood watching and waiting for deer, in his own Pennsylvania woods in the long ago, when but a boy in his teens. No hoot of owl, or cry of night-bird fell on his stained senses. The silence was burdensome. Instead of feeling relieved by the damp dews of heaven on his brow, Captain Chetwood felt more op- pressed than ever. ““Ueh! this is awful.’ I will take a turn down yon- der aways. Mayhap I may run upon something to attract my attention, to withdraw my thoughts from _. —Bertha and her lover.’’ | Ah, yes, that was his trouble. This was the first acknowledgment he shad made even to himself. He walked away into the fog. He had gone perhaps twenty rods when he came to a sudden halt. He had passed a sentinel on his beat, passed him in the fog without being discovered, and. now stood many yards beyond the outpost. : The sound of steps fell on the captain’s ear. Tramp—tramp! Stock-still the Union captain stood and listened. He could not be mistaken. That muffled sound could be nothing else, nothing but the tramp of men. _ They were not Federals, _" cS Eomicboo (E(0) m