A Daughter of Maryland — page 173: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

150 A DAUGHTER OF MARYLAND. cannon. Our task is to pick up a few of the raveled threads of filling the historian has dropped in the warp of his page. *Thus we are spared the description of that sanguinary struggle between the evenly matched armies, which ended only when the rival ranks had torn each other to shreds, falling back in fragments but not in disorder, baffled for the time but not defeated. Sharpsburg had two main roads running out from the town, one leading northward to Hagerstown, the other easterly to Sylvania, and thence northward along the base of South Mountain. A couple of miles from the east bank the Antietam rises from the base of the mountain, the grim sentinel of which we have had occasion to speak, guarding the entrance to Wind River Valley. Near this point Stuart’s cavalry rested the night before the battle, sending out a foraging detachment early in the evening, to which it so happened Lieutenant Berners was attached. . - But the latter was not in charge of the party or the unpleasant incident we are about to describe would never have taken place. The moon was in its first quarter, but the sky was suffi- ciently clear for the foragers to see their way as plainly as they cared, with the Federal army resting on their arms less than two miles away. Like so many shadows the horsemen rode as silently as possible along the sandy road leading toward Sylvania, Lieutenant Berners suffering untold agony as he foresaw the inevitable result of this expedition. Riding impetuously seneuids the leader, he said: ‘‘There are rich plantations off to our left; should we not be the gainers to head more in that direction ?’’ ‘What do you know about this business?’ was the gruff reply. “IT know every foot of this country for miles, and every place and its conditions. If we keep on this way we shall strike but one homestead for several miles, while just to our - comic 900 col i” — a ——_— 2