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It kept the boys straight and strong. Close after came a month or so on the Yorktown peninsula with that master of strategic ruse, Magruder, but solely in the dreariest hardships of war, minus all the grander sorts that yield glory; rains, bad food, ill-chosen camps, freshets, terrible roads, horses sick and raw-boned, chills, jaundice, emaciation, barely an occasional bang at the enemy on reconnoissances and picketings, and marches and countermarches through blistering noons and skyless nights, with men, teams, and guns trying to see which could stagger the worst, along with columns of infantry mutinously weary of forever fortifying and never fighting.
Gross excesses were committed, whole villages being in some instances plundered and the people turned adrift, while half hangings, floggings and picketings, were freely resorted to to extort confessions of concealed arms.
The activity of the camp became swallowed up, and only his keen ears told him of it. The pack ponies at their picketings, under the sheer walls beyond the cook-house, abandoned their restless movements over their evening meal of grain. The moment was approaching. At last he stirred. He rose alertly and peered within the darkened doorway.
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