All night from the hour of three, the dead man’s hour, the rain falls in heavy gusts, in black irresistible streams as if the whole sky were falling in one wet huddle. All night, living and dead sleep under it, without moving, on the field; the surgeons work in the church; the wounded moan; the dissevered fragments of companies and regiments look for each other, trying to come together. In the morning, when the burial-parties go out, the rain is still falling, damping the powder of the three rounds fired over the grave; before the grave is well-dug, the bottom of the grave is a puddle. All day long the Southern armies bury their dead to the sodden drums of the rain; all day the bugle calls a hoarse-throated “Taps”; the bugler lets the water run from his bugle-mouth and wipes it clean again and curses the rainy weather.