, to his amazement, saw himself reduced to the defensive. He and
Grant had reckoned that the decimated brigades of the South could not
stand at all before him, but just as on the first day they came on with
the fierce rebel yell, hurling themselves upon superior numbers, taking
the cannon of their enemy, losing them, and retaking them and losing
them again, but never yielding.

The great conflict increased in violence. Buell, a man of iron courage,
saw that his soldiers must fight to the uttermost, not for victory only,
but even to ward off defeat. The dawn was now far advanced. The rain had
ceased, and the sun again shot down sheaves of fiery rays upon a vast
low cloud of fire and smoke in which thousands of men met in desperate
combat.

Nine o'clock came. It had been expected by Grant that Buell long before
that time would have swept everything before him. But for three hours
Buell had been fighting to keep himself from being swept away. The
Southern troops seemed animated by that extraordinary battle fever and
absolute contempt of death which distinguished them so often during this
war. Buell's army was driven in on both flanks, and only the center
held fast. It began to seem possible that the South, despite her reduced
ranks might yet defeat both Northern armies. Another battery dashed up
to the relief of the men in blue. It was charged at once by the men in
gray so fiercely that the gunners were glad to escape with their
guns, and once more the wild rebel yell of triumph swelled through the
southern forest.

Dick, standing with his comrades on one of the ridges that they had
defended so well, listened to the roar of conflict on the wing, ever
increasing in volume, and watched the vast clouds of smoke gathering
over the forest. He could see from where he stood the flash of rifle
fire and the blaze of cannon, and both eye and ear told him that the
battle was not moving back upon the South.

"It seems that we do not make headway, sir," he said to Colonel
Winchester, who also stood by him, looking and listening.

"Not that I can perceive," replied the colonel, "and yet with the rush
of forty thousand fresh troops of ours upon the field I deemed victory
quick and easy. How the battle grows! How the South fights!"

Colonel Winchester walked away presently and joined Sherman, who was
eagerly watching the mighty conflict, into which he knew that his own
worn and shattered troops must sooner or later be drawn. He walk