The Long Roll - LightNovelsOnl.com
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All day Stonewall Jackson lay in state. Twenty thousand people, from the President of the Confederacy to the last poor wounded soldier who could creep hither, pa.s.sed before the bier, looked upon the calm face, the flag-enshrouded form, lying among lilies before the Speaker's Chair, in the Virginia Hall of Delegates, in the Capitol of the Confederacy. All day the bells tolled, all day the minute guns were fired.
A man of the Stonewall Brigade, pausing his moment before the dead leader, first bent, then lifted his head. He was a scout, a blonde soldier, tall and strong, with a quiet, studious face and sea-blue eyes.
He looked now at the vaulted roof as though he saw instead the sky. He spoke in a controlled, determined voice. "What Stonewall Jackson always said was just this: _'Press forward!'_" He pa.s.sed on.
Presently in line came a private soldier of A. P. Hill's, a young man like a beautiful athlete from a frieze, an athlete who was also a philosopher. "Hail, great man of the past!" he said. "If to-day you consort with Caesar, tell him we still make war." He, too, went on.
Others pa.s.sed, and then there came an artilleryman, a gunner of the Horse Artillery. Grey-eyed, broad-browed, he stood his moment and gazed upon the dead soldier among the lilies. "Hooker yet upon the Rappahannock," he said. "We must have him across the Potomac, and we must ourselves invade Pennsylvania."
