these advancing men pierce our line and
become the entering wedge, driven home, that would sever our army
asunder, what hope would there be afterwards, and where the blood-earned
fruits of yesterday? It was long enough for the Rebel storm to drift
across more than half the space that had at first separated it from us.
None, or all, of these considerations either depressed or elevated us.
They might have done the former, had we been timid; the latter had we
been confident and vain. But, we were there waiting, and ready to do our
duty--that done, results could not dishonor us.

Our skirmishers open a spattering fire along the front, and, fighting,
retire upon the main line--the first drops, the heralds of the storm,
sounding on our windows. Then the thunders of our guns, first Arnold's
then Cushing's and Woodruff's and the rest, shake and reverberate again
through the air, and their sounding shells smite the enemy. The General
said I had better go and tell General Meade of this advance. To gallop
to General Meade's headquarters, to learn there that he had changed them
to another part of the field, to dispatch to him by the Signal Corps in
General Gibbon's name the message, "The enemy is advancing his infantry
in force upon my front," and to be again upon the crest, were but the
work of a minute. All our available guns are now active, and from the
fire of shells, as the range grows shorter and shorter, they change to
shrapnel, and from shrapnel to canister; but in spite of shells, and
shrapnel and canister, without wavering or halt, the hardy lines of the
enemy continue to move on. The Rebel guns make no reply to ours, and no
charging shout rings out to-day, as is the Rebel wont; but the courage
of these silent men amid our shots seems not to need the stimulus of
other noise. The enemy's right flank sweeps near Stannard's bushy crest,
and his concealed Vermonters rake it with a well-delivered fire of
musketry. The gray lines do not halt or reply, but withdrawing a little
from that extreme, they still move on. And so across all that broad open
ground they have come, nearer and nearer, nearly half the way, with our
guns bellowing in their faces, until now a hundred yards, no more,
divide our ready left from their advancing right. The eager men there
are impatient to begin. Let them. First, Harrow's breastworks flame;
then Hall's; then Webb's. As if our bullets were the fire coals that
touched off their muskets, the enemy in f