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I no longer heard the monotonous creak of harness and whiffletrees and the rumble of wheels; I saw no longer the stars and the darkness of the night. My mind had scampered off into the future. I was playing with Sally or with the boys in the school yard. The Senator tested my arithmetic and grammar and geography as we rode along in the darkness and said by and by: "You'll have to work hard, Bart.
He had a squint in one eye which, as Sam said, "gave him the appearance of looking continually over his shoulder. When he talked his voice was an alternate squeak and rumble. "Well, of all the odd fellows I ever met he is the limit," was Tom's comment. "Why, he'd do for a comic valentine!" "I almost had to laugh in his face," said Sam. "Even now I can't look at him without grinning."
On this particular evening he sat over his pipe rather longer than usual, seduced by the beauty of the scene and the moment. It was very quiet. The prolonged rumble of the mine's stamp-mill came to his ears in a ceaseless diapason, but the sound was so much a matter of course that Lockwood no longer heard it.
Dick meanwhile could hear through the crash of the firing the deep rumble of Pope's great army with its artillery and thousands of wagons continually marching toward the Rappahannock. His mind became absorbed in a vital question. Would Lee and Jackson come up before they could reach the bigger river? Would a battle be forced the next day while the Union army was in retreat?
That was not a pleasant outlook, but then things might be a lot worse, Frank told himself. Sure enough the gloom once more descended, and again the thunder took up the old rumble and crash. Perhaps the wind was not as furious as was the first rush, and the rain may have been less in quantity, but the second part of the storm was severe and terrifying enough.
When the melody gave way the silence was broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the song rose. When the singing ceased the bands played marches. They were followed by the rumble of the howitzers, the creaking of wheels and of chains clanking against the cobblestones, and the sharp, bell- like voices of the bugles.
A wide sense of thankfulness and peace possessed her, as she looked at the autumn landscape, listened to the rumble of a wagon on the bridge, and heard the call of the river as it dashed to the sea. She put up her hand softly and touched first the shining brass knocker and then the red bricks, glowing in the October sun.
There was a rumble of voices, and Tom listened to catch the words. "... don't care what you think, the boss says tighten it up...." "But they got them locked in...." "So tell it to the boss. We're supposed to check every compartment in the section every hour. Now get moving...." The footsteps moved up and down the corridor then, and Tom heard hatches clanging open.
They sat in the mill until noon, listening to the dull rumble of the wheel and watching the water getting lower and lower, while they debated the best way of planting the bottom. "I suppose we'd better go up and get our dinner, Bob," said his uncle, suddenly coming out of a day dream into which he had fallen almost an hour before.
At sunset one night Diane paid her toll at a Lilliputian house built like an architectural barnacle on to the end of a covered bridge, and with a rumble of boards wound slowly through the dusty, twilight tunnel into Pennsylvania.
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