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We have lost many men from the season, very few from the enemy." He himself escaped more easily than most. To use his own quaint expression, "All the prevailing disorders have attacked me, but I have not strength enough for them to fasten upon. I am here the reed amongst the oaks: I bow before the storm, while the sturdy oak is laid low."
Well, he was a born fighter, went from Harvard into the Rebellion and was left for dead at Seven Oaks, where one of the company found him and saved him. He set that may up for life, and never talked about it, either. See what he wrote on the bottom 'To my friend, Claude Ditmar, Stephen Chippering. And believe me, when he once called a man a friend he never took it back.
We rode for hours through a beautiful shady forest, where a fragrant breeze in our faces made riding pleasant. Large oaks and patches of sumach appeared on the rocky slopes. We descended a good deal in this morning's travel, and the air grew appreciably warmer. The smell of pine was thick and fragrant; the sound of wind was sweet and soughing.
These were little more than mounds, and for the most part were veiled from sight by the low-lying sea-mist, through which gnarled and stunted oaks rose mysterious, to fade as strangely. Weird trees they were, with branches unlike those of this world's trees, rising in a grey land without horizon or limit, through which our travellers moved, weary phantoms in a clinging nightmare.
From the window where she stood, the pass that they had traveled through the Highlands was easily to be seen; and the mountain which held on its summit the mysterious hut was directly before her. Its side was rugged and barren; huge and apparently impassable barriers of rocks presenting themselves through the stunted oaks, which, stripped of their foliage, were scattered over its surface.
Both are highly interesting, and I frequently take them from the shelf and look them over. And when I do so, there always rises up on about every page the recollection of the tall, imposing figure of Col. Marcy, as he stood beneath the oaks at Devall's Bluff, Arkansas, on the morning of July 4th, 1864, and waved his arm towards us, and said in a kind tone, and with approving look: "Good soldiers!"
I thought we could go around within the outer line of works by this country road across to the Mechanicsville pike on the south side of the Chickahominy, and encamp the next night at Fair Oaks; so I determined to make the movement after dark, being influenced in this to some extent by reports received during the afternoon from colored people, to the effect that General B. F. Butler's army had reached a small stream on the south side of the James, about four miles south of Richmond.
On catching sight of them he held aloft what looked like a letter, waving it about his head in evident desire to attract their attention; then as he reached their road he halted and waited for them to come up. "Mr. Dinsmore, from the Oaks or Ion, isn't it?" he queried, lifting his cap and bowing to the lady and her escort as they reined in their steeds close at hand. "Yes."
The dead leaves strewed the avenue along which Sir Oswald Eversleigh went to his last resting-place; the dead leaves fluttered slowly downward from the giant oaks the noble old beeches; there was not one gleam of sunshine on the landscape, not one break in the leaden grey of the sky. It seemed as if the funeral of departed summer was being celebrated on this first dreary autumn day.
Upon the island still stand noble beeches, oaks, and chestnuts trees that long ago have covered up their bullet-scars, but they could tell, had they the power to speak, many a wild thrilling tale. Beautiful parks and stately mansions grace the island; and polished equipages roll over the ground that once knew naught save the soft tread of the deer and the moccasin.
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