On Sunday, having risen early--though not so early as the post relief, whose day begins as soon as a sentry can see clearly for a thousand yards--I dressed me by the rosy light of the rising sun, and, before I breakfasted, wrote a long letter to my parents, who, as I have said, were now residing near Paris, where my great-grandfather's estate lay.
When I had finished my letter, sanded and sealed it, I went out to leave it with the packages of post matter collected from the French regiments across the Hudson, and destined for France by an early packet, which was to sail as soon as the long-expected French fleet arrived from the West Indies.
I delivered my letter to the staff-officer detailed for that duty, and then, hearing military music, went back to the Blue Fox in time to see a funeral of an officer slowly passing eastward, gun-carriage, horses, men, in strange silhouette against the level and dazzling white disk of the rising sun. Truly, the slow cortège seemed moving straight into the flaming gates of heaven, the while their solemn music throbbed and throbbed with the double drum-beat at the finish of each line. The tune was called "Funeral Thoughts." They changed to "Roslyn Castle" as they crossed the bridge; yet an hour had scarce passed when I heard their volley-firing not very far away, and back they came, the Fife-Major leading, drums, fifes, and light-infantry horns gaily sounding "The Pioneer," and the men swinging back briskly to fall in with the Church details, now marching in from every direction to the admonitory timing of a single drum-beat.
The music had awakened Elsin, and presently she came a-tapping at my door, barefoot, her cardinal tightly wrapped around her, hair tumbled, drowsily rubbing her heavy lids.
"Good morning, Carus," she said sleepily. "I should dearly like to hear a good, strong sermon on damnation to-day--being sensible of my present state of sin, and of yours. Do they preach hell-fire in Rebeldom?"
"The landlord says that Hazen's mixed brigade and other troops go to service in the hay-field above the bridge," I answered, laughing. "Shall we ride thither?"
She nodded, yawning, then pulling her foot-mantle closer about her shoulders, pattered back into her chamber, and I went below and ordered our horses saddled, and breakfast to be served us as soon as might be.
And so it happened that, ere the robins had done caroling their morning songs, and the far, sweet anthems of the hermit-birds still rang in dewy woodlands, Elsin and I dismounted in Granger's hay-field just as the troops marched up in a long, dense column, the massed music of many regiments ahead, but only a single drum timing the steady tread.