e ground was strewn with the dead and wounded. "We shall
want some of your guns."

Penhallow went in haste to the rear. What he saw was terrible. The iron
hail of shells fell fast around him on the wide open space or even as far
away as the hospital tents. On or near the Taneytown road terror-stricken
wagon-drivers were flying, ammunition mules were torn to pieces or lying
mangled; a shell exploded in a wagon,--driver, horses and a load of bread
were gone. Horses lay about, dead or horribly torn; one horse hitched to
a tree went on cropping grass. Penhallow missed nothing. He was in the
mood peril always brought. Men said he was a slow, sure thinker, and
missed seeing things which did not interest him. Now he was gay, tuned to
the highest pitch of automatic watchfulness, as this far-sent storm of
bursting shells went over and past the troops it was meant to destroy.
Hurrying through it he saw the wide slope clear rapidly of what was left
of active life. He laughed as a round shot knocked a knapsack off a man's
back. The man unhurt did not stay to look for it. Once the colonel
dropped as a shell lit near him. It did not explode. He ejaculated,
"Pshaw," and went on. He came near the Taneytown road to find that his
artillery had suffered. A score of harnessed horses lay dead or horribly
mangled. His quick orders sent up to the front a dozen guns. Some were
horsed, some were pulled with ropes by the cheering, eager cannoneers.
Their way was up the deserted slope, "well cleared by the enemy," thought
Penhallow with a smile. Once he looked back and saw the far flight of a
shell end in or near an ambulance of the wounded beyond the Taneytown
road.

During his absence gun after gun had been disabled and a caisson
exploded; the gun crews lay dead or wounded. What more horribly disturbed
Penhallow was the hideous screams of the battery horses. "Ah! the pity of
it. They had no cause to die for--no duty--no choice." As he assisted in
replacing the wreckage of the guns, he still heard the cries of the
animals who so dumb in peace found in torture voices of anguish unheard
before--unnatural, strange. The appalling tempest of shells screamed on
and on, while the most of them fell beyond the Crest. Penhallow looked up
to note their flight. They darted overhead shrill-voiced or hissing.
There was a white puff of smoke, a red flash, and an explosion.

General Gibbon, coming back from the long line of his corps, said, "My
men have suffe