fears were coming true.

The attack in front increased in violence, and the Northern army was
also attacked with fiery energy on both flanks. The men had the actual
physical feeling that they were enclosed in the jaws of a vise, and,
forced to abandon all hope of victory, they fought now to escape. Two
small squadrons of cavalry, scarce two hundred in number, sent forward
from a wood, charged the whole Southern army under a storm of cannon and
rifle fire. They equalled the ride of the Six Hundred at Balaklava, but
with no poet to celebrate it, it remained like so many other charges in
this war, an obscure and forgotten incident.

Dick saw the charge of the horsemen, and the return of the few. Then
he lost hope. Above the roar of the battle the rebel yell continually
swelled afresh. The setting sun, no longer golden but red, cast a
sinister light over the trampled wheat field, the slopes and the woods
torn by cannon balls. The dead and the wounded lay in thousands, and
Banks, brave and tenacious, but with bitter despair in his heart, was
seeking to drag the remains of his army from that merciless vise which
continued to close down harder and harder.

Dick's excitement and tension seemed to abate. He had been keyed to so
high a pitch that his pulses grew gentler through very lack of force,
and with the relaxation came a clearer view. He saw the sinking red
sun through the banks of smoke, and in fancy he already felt the cool
darkness upon his face after the hot and terrible August day. He knew
that night might save them, and he prayed deeply and fervently for its
swift coming.

He and the sergeant came suddenly to Colonel Winchester, whose hat had
been shot from his head, but who was otherwise unharmed. Warner and
Pennington were near, Warner slightly wounded but apparently unaware of
the fact. The colonel, by shout and by gesture, was gathering around him
the remains of his regiment. Other regiments on either side were trying
to do the same, and eventually they formed a compact mass which, driving
with all its force back toward its old position, reached the hills and
the woods just as the jaws of Stonewall Jackson's vise shut down, but
not upon the main body.

Victory, won for a little while, had been lost. Night protected their
retreat, and they fought with a valor that made Jackson and all his
generals cautious. But this knowledge was little compensation to the
Northern troops. They knew that behind them was a gr