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The copse, all dim and smoky, flowered again, three hundred red points of fire. The sound was crushing, startling, beating at the ear drum. The Bucktails were shouting, "Come on, Johnny Reb! Go back, Johnny Reb! Don't know what you want to do, do you, Johnny Reb?" Ashby and the bay reached the front of the regiment. There was disorder, wavering, from underfoot groans and cries.
They are on terms of mortal defiance, and cannot hold courteous intercourse together." "Indeed!" repeated the robber, and paused after he had said the word. "And what wert thou now doing at Ashby with such a charge in thy custody?" "I went thither to render to Isaac the Jew of York," replied Gurth, "the price of a suit of armour with which he fitted my master for this tournament."
He began to hear new or unfamiliar names, Early, and Ewell, and Jackson, and Lee, and Johnston, and Hill, and Stuart, and Ashby, names that he would never forget, but names that as yet meant little to him. He had letters from his father and he expected to find his friends of Charleston in Richmond or at the front.
In between the iron giants roared the melee Ashby jousting with Hatch's convoying cavalry the Louisiana troops firing in a long battle line, from behind the stone fences a horrible jam of wagons, overturned or overturning, panic-stricken mules, drivers raving out oaths, using mercilessly long, snaky, black whips heat, dust, thirst and thunder, wild excitement, blood and death!
And truth to tell the Admiral and Mrs. Ashby were not in the least sanguine of being able to find any one else capable of repeating it and for a time were a good deal daunted by the outlook for the coming year. The previous year Archie Carey had gone away to school and during his holidays had come back to Uplands brimful of enthusiasm and determined to have Athol join him.
In his official report he wrote: "The close relation General Ashby bore to my command for most of the previous twelve months will justify me in saying that as a partisan officer I never knew his superior. His daring was proverbial, his powers of endurance almost incredible, his character heroic, and his sagacity almost intuitive in divining the purposes and movements of the enemy."
Why you may as well try to convince me that I, myself, did not enter Suite 10, and that I did not speak to Beverly Ashby in it not ten minutes ago, and leave her there in the middle of her bed weeping and conducting herself like a spoiled child because she could not participate in the closing Virginia Reel. Utter nonsense! Utter nonsense! But we will have no more hoodwinking, rest assured.
The two friends then went off, and soon were comfortably seated in the rooms of Harry Rivers, with some flasks of wine and Havanas to help along the evening hours. Harry Rivers was of about the same age as Ashby, but totally different in appearance. He was of medium height, very well knit in his frame, and very well dressed.
He did not believe her altogether. He believed that she had loved him, but had forgotten him while flirting with another. If she had forgotten Ashby so readily, she would also forget Rivers with equal readiness, and say quite as boldly that she had never loved Rivers. This passion was a sudden whim it was no more than a dream; she was hardly in her right mind, she was infatuated.
"The worst of it is," said Ashby, "I believe that this Russell is one of the most infernal villains that ever lived, and that he is concocting some scheme against Katie." "A scheme! how?" "Well, I'll tell you. I saw from the first that he was hostile to me. Possibly this may have been my own fault, for I saw the fellow was a beastly cad, not at all fit to be Katie's guardian.
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