THE GATHERING

Now, no sooner had we broken camp, covered our fire, packed, saddled, and mounted, than all around us, as we advanced, the wilderness began to wear an aspect very different to that brooding solitude which hitherto had been familiar to us — our shelter and our menace also.

For we had proceeded on our deeply-trodden war trail no more than a mile or two before we encountered the raw evidences of an army’s occupation. Everywhere spotted leads, game trails, and runways had been hacked, trimmed, and widened into more open wood-walks; foot-paths enlarged to permit the passage of mounted men; cattle-roads cleared, levelled, made smoother for wagons and artillery; log bridges built across the rapid streams that darkled westward, swamps and swales paved with logs, and