I
"It looks as if it might rain this afternoon," remarked the lieutenant
of artillery.
"So it does," the infantry captain assented. He glanced casually at the
sky. When his eyes had lowered to the green-shadowed landscape before
him, he said fretfully: "I wish those fellows out yonder would quit
pelting at us. They've been at it since noon."
At the edge of a grove of maples, across wide fields, there
occasionally appeared little puffs of smoke of a dull hue in this gloom
of sky which expressed an impending rain. The long wave of blue and
steel in the field moved uneasily at the eternal barking of the
far-away sharpshooters, and the men, leaning upon their rifles, stared
at the grove of maples. Once a private turned to borrow some tobacco
from a comrade in the rear rank, but, with his hand still stretched
out, he continued to twist his head and glance at the distant trees. He
was afraid the enemy would shoot him at a time when he was not looking.