noon
There were touches of green in the brown valley , but the hill slopes and all the spread of land about them were gray and splotched and dull against a blue-gray sickly sky . The hours went by slowly to each anxious soldier , for endurance was almost at its limit . More heavily still they must have dragged for the man on whom the burden of command rested . High noon , and then the afternoon interminably long and dull , and by and by came the sunset on the Sweetwater Valley , and a new heaven and a new earth were revealed to the sons of men . Like a chariot of fire , the great sun rolled in all its gorgeous beauty down the west . The eastern sky grew radiant with a pink splendor , and every brown and mottled stretch of distant landscape was touched with golden light or deepened into richest purple , or set with a roseate bound of flame . Somewhere far away , a feathery gray mist hung like a silvery veil toning down the earth from the noonday glare to the sunset glory .