“You remember those old Greek stories about somebody or other going down to Hades, and then having a hard climb out again.  We’re the modern imitators.  If this isn’t Hades then I don’t know what it is.”

“It surely is.  Phew, but that hurt!”

“What happened?”

“I brushed my hand against a burning bush.  The result was not happy.  Don’t imitate me.”

Dalton’s horse leaped to one side, and he had difficulty in keeping the saddle.  His hoof had been planted squarely in the midst of a mass of hot twigs.

“The sooner I get out of this Inferno or Hades of a place the happier I’ll be!” said Dalton.

“I’ve never seen the like,” said Harry, “but there’s one thing about it that makes me glad.”

“And what’s the saving grace?”

“That it’s in Virginia and not in Kentucky, though for the matter of that it couldn’t be in Kentucky.”

“And why couldn’t it be in Kentucky?”

“Because there’s no such God-forsaken region in all that state of mine.”

“It certainly gets upon one’s soul,” said Dalton, looking at the gloomy region, so terribly torn by battle.

“But if we keep going we’re bound to come out of it some time or other.”

“And we’re not stopping.  A man can’t make his bed on a mass of coals, and there’ll be no rest for us until we’re clear out of the Wilderness.”

They marched on a long time, and, as day dawned, hundreds of voices united in a shout of gladness.  Behind them were the shades of the Wilderness, that dismal region reeking with slaughter and ruin, and before them lay firm soil, and green fields, in all the flush of a brilliant May morning.

“Well, we did come out of Hades, Harry,” said Dalton.

“And it does look like Heaven, but the trouble with our Hades, George, is that the inmates will follow us.  Put your glasses to your eyes and look off there.”

“Horsemen as sure as we’re sitting in our own saddles.”

“And Northern horsemen, too.  Their uniforms are new enough for me to tell their color.  I take it that Grant’s vanguard has moved by our right flank and has come out of the Wilderness.”

“And our surmises that we were to meet it are right.  Spottsylvania Court House is not far away, and maybe we are bound for it.”

“And maybe the Yankees are too.”

Harry’s words were caused by the sound of a distant and scattering fire.  In obedience to an order from Anderson, he and Dalton galloped forward, and, from a ridge, saw through their glasses a formidable Union column advancing toward Spottsylvania.  As they looked they saw many men fall and they also saw flashes of flame from bushes and fences not far from its flank.

“Our sharpshooters are there,” said Harry.  And he was right.  While the Union force was advancing in the night Stuart had dismounted many of his men and using them as skirmishers had incessantly harassed the march of Grant’s vanguard led by Warren.