the right; the squadrons passed on; and--"Steady!
Trot! Steady--right dress--gallop!" came the orders.

The wild music of "Garryowen" set the horses frantic--and the men, too.
The band, still advancing at a walk, was dropping rapidly behind. A
bullet hit kettle-drummer Pillsbury, and he fell with a grunt, doubling
up across his nigh kettle-drum. A moment later Peters struck his cymbals
wildly together and fell clean out of his saddle, crashing to the sod.
Schwarz, his trombone pierced by a ball, swore aloud and dragged his
frantic horse into line.

"Right dress!" said the bandmaster blandly, mastering his own splendid
mount as a bullet grazed its shoulder.

They were in the smoke now, they heard the yelling charge ahead, the
rifle fire raging, swelling to a terrific roar; and they marched
forward, playing "Garryowen"--not very well, for Connor's jaw was half
gone, and Bradley's horse was down; and the bandmaster, reeling in the
saddle, parried blow on blow from a clubbed rifle, until a stunning
crack alongside of the head laid him flat across his horse's neck. And
there he clung till he tumbled off, a limp, loose-limbed mass, lying in
the trampled grass under the heavy pall of smoke.

Long before sunset the echoing thunder in the hills had ceased; the edge
of the great battle that had skirted Sandy River, with a volley or two
and an obscure cavalry charge, was ended. Beyond the hills, far away on
the horizon, the men of the North were tramping forward through the
Confederacy. The immense exodus had begun again; the invasion was
developing; and as the tremendous red spectre receded, the hem of its
smoky robe brushed Sandy River and was gone, leaving a scorched regiment
or two along the railroad, and a hospital at Oxley Court House
overcrowded.

In the sunset light the cavalry returned passing the white mansion on
the hill. They brought in their dead and wounded on hay wagons; and the
boy, pale as a spectre, looked on, while the creaking wagons passed by
under the trees.

But it was his sister whose eyes caught the glitter of a gilt and yellow
sleeve lying across the hay; and she dropped her brother's hand and ran
out into the road.

"Is he dead?" she asked the trooper who was driving.

"No, miss. Will you take him in?"

"Yes," she said. "Bring him."

The driver drew rein, wheeled his team, and drove into the great
gateway. "Hospital's plum full, ma'am," he said. "Wait; I'll carry him
up. Head's bust a leetl