The guarded outer lines of the defences of Petersburg included forests with here and there open spaces and clumps of trees.  More than a half mile away from the enemy, on rising ground, amid bushes and trees, lay the army corps of General Parke.  It was far into the night.  The men were comfortably asleep, for on this second of April, the air was no longer chilly and there were no tents up.  In the mid-centre of the corps-line behind the ridge a huge fire marked the headquarters.  As the great logs blazed high, they cast radiating shadows of tree trunks, which were and were not as the fire rose or fell.  Horses tied to the trees moved uneasily when from far and near came the clamour of guns.  Now and then a man sat up in the darkness and listened, but this was some new recruit.  For the most of the sleepers the roar of guns was less disturbing than the surly mosquitoes and the sonorous trumpeting of a noisy neighbour.  Aides dismounted near the one small tent in the wood shadows, and coming out mounted horses as tired as the riders and rode away into the night.  Here and there apart black servants and orderlies slept the deep sleep of irresponsibility and among them Josiah.  Beside the deserted fire John Penhallow sat smoking.  A hand fell on his shoulder.

“Halloa, Blake!” he said, “where did you come from?”

“I am on Wright’s staff.  I am waiting for a note I am to carry.  There will be no sleep for me to-night.  We shall attack at dawn—­a square frontal attack through slashes, chevaux-de-frises and parapets; but the men are keen for it, and we shall win.”

“I think so—­the game is nearly played out.”

“I am sorry for them, Penhallow.”

“And I. I was thinking when you came of the pleasant West Point friends who may be in those woods yonder, and of the coming agony of that wonderful crumbling host of brave men, and of my uncle’s friend, Robert Lee.  I shall be a happy man when I can take their hands again.”

“How many will be left?” said Blake.

“God knows—­we shall, I hope, live to be proud of them.”

“My friend Francis sees always the humorous side of war—­I cannot.”

“It does have—­oh, very rarely—­its humorous side,” returned Penhallow, “but not often for me.  His mocking way of seeing things is doubly unpleasant because no man in the army is more in earnest.  This orchestra of snoring men would amuse him.”

As Blake sat down, he said, “I wonder if they are talking the language of that land—­that nightly bourne from which we bring back so little.  Listen to them!”

“That’s so like you, Blake.  I was reflecting too when you came on the good luck I had at the North Anna when you pulled me out.  Mark Rivers once said that I was good at making acquaintances, but slow at making friendships.”

“Thank you,” said Blake, understanding him readily.  “I am somewhat like you.”

The solemnity of the night and of the fate-laden hours had opened for a minute the minds of two men as reserved and reticent as are most well-bred Americans, who as a rule lack the strange out-spoken frankness of our English kin.