es
and passing along the line of stretchers, scanning each face.

A new pain appeared in the Doctor's face, as he watched her.

"You'll not find him there," he said. "The last I saw of him he was
forming a handful of the regiment that were still on their feet, to
retake cannon which the Rebels had captured. I was starting off with the
Colonel here, when they dashed away."

"Come," he said, after making some temporary provisions for the comfort
of his wounded. "You must get away from here as quickly as possible. I
fear the army is badly defeated, and it may be a rout soon. You must get
away before the rush begins, for then it will be terrible."

He took her over the pike, and across it to where some wagons were
standing. As he was about to put Rachel in one of these their attention
was arrested by an officer, apparently acting as Provost Marshal,
dragging from behind a huge rock a Lieutenant who was skulking there.
They were too far away to hear what was said, but not so far that
they could not recognize the skulker as Lieutenant Jacob Alspaugh. The
Provost Marshal apparently demanded the skulker's name, and wrote it in
a book. Alspaugh seemed to give the information, and accompanied it with
a lugubrious pointing to a bandage around his knee. The Provost Marshal
stooped and took the handkerchief off, to find that not even the cloth
of the pantaloons had been injured. He contemptuously tore the straps
from Alspaugh's shoulders, and left him.

"The rascal's cowardice is like the mercy of God," said Denslow, "for it
endureth forever."

He put Rachel in the wagon, and ordered the driver to start at once for
Nashville with her. She pressed his hand, as they separated with fatigue
and grief.

How had it been faring all this time with Harry Glen and those with him?

The fierce wave had dashed against the regiment early in the morning,
and although the first fire received from the Rebels made gaps in the
ranks where fifty men fell, it did not recoil a step, but drove its
assailants back with such slaughter that their dead, lying in the open
ground over which they crossed, were grimly compared by Abe Bolton to
"punkins layin' in a field where the corn's been cut off."

Then the fight settled into a murderous musketry duel across the field,
in which the ranks on both sides melted away like frost in the sun. In a
few minutes all the field officers were down, and the only Captain that
remained untouched took command of the