ding and
near to losing his mind with rage, there was felt a subtle fellowship
and equality. They supported each other in all manner of hoarse,
howling protests.

But the regiment was a machine run down. The two men babbled at a
forceless thing. The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were
continually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge that comrades were
slipping with speed back to the lines. It was difficult to think of
reputation when others were thinking of skins. Wounded men were left
crying on this black journey.

The smoke fringes and flames blustered always. The youth, peering once
through a sudden rift in a cloud, saw a brown mass of troops,
interwoven and magnified until they appeared to be thousands. A
fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision.

Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged, the
discovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and a hundred flames
jetted toward the retreating band. A rolling gray cloud again
interposed as the regiment doggedly replied. The youth had to depend
again upon his misused ears, which were trembling and buzzing from the
melee of musketry and yells.

The way seemed eternal. In the clouded haze men became panicstricken
with the thought that the regiment had lost its path, and was
proceeding in a perilous direction. Once the men who headed the wild
procession turned and came pushing back against their comrades,
screaming that they were being fired upon from points which they had
considered to be toward their own lines. At this cry a hysterical fear
and dismay beset the troops. A soldier, who heretofore had been
ambitious to make the regiment into a wise little band that would
proceed calmly amid the huge-appearing difficulties, suddenly sank down
and buried his face in his arms with an air of bowing to a doom. From
another a shrill lamentation rang out filled with profane allusions to
a general. Men ran hither and thither, seeking with their eyes roads of
escape. With serene regularity, as if controlled by a schedule,
bullets buffed into men.

The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob, and with his flag
in his hands took a stand as if he expected an attempt to push him to
the ground. He unconsciously assumed the attitude of the color bearer
in the fight of the preceding day. He passed over his brow a hand that
trembled. His breath did not come freely. He was choking during this
small wait for the crisis.

His frie