6.

It was uneasy work to cross those fields. There was but little moon, & yet starlight was enough to see by. All of us had the fear, for this was the land of partisans and rangers, who would shoot a man’s back should he step away from his fellows & only long enough to heed the call of nature. At the least we could see something. Away from the line & the endless dust of marching the air was almost preternaturally clear. Perhaps that is how Eben Nudd spotted the white demon so easily, though it took pains to hide itself.

Nudd grabbed my arm, without warning, & I nearly jumped. In the darkness every motion was an enemy, & every sound the hoofbeats of a regiment of Reb cavalry. Nudd did not call out, though, or make any sign. He lifted one finger & pointed toward a stand of trees at perhaps twenty-five yards.

For myself I saw but a certain pallor in those woods, at least at first, like a snake of mist coiled up. I squatted down & squinted & thought maybe I saw a pair of eyes there, like the last embers of a campfire. I did not care for their expression. “Is that man watching us?” I asked Eben Nudd, my voice a barest exhalation of air.

“Ayup,” he said, which I sometimes think is half of his vocabulary. Eben Nudd is the very type of a downeaster, formerly a lobsterman, with a craggy face like leather & eyes as pale & clear as morning dew, & he was born, it sometimes seems, with no passion in his breast at all. Many times on many battlefields his coldness had served us well & I trusted him now, even when I liked not what he had to say. “Longer than we seen him, I figger.”

—THE STATEMENT OF ALVA GRIEST