dly
shouts: "They are Confederates! Sure as the world, they are
Confederates!"

But Barry thinks he knows better, and hastily responds: "I know they are
your battery-support."

Griffin spurs toward his pieces, countermands his previous order,
and firing is resumed in the old direction.

Andrew Porter, has just ridden up to Heintzelman's side, and now catches
sight of the Rebel regiment. "What troops are those?" he asks of
General Hientzelman, pointing in their direction.

While Heintzelman is replying, and just as Averell drops his reins and
levels his field-glass at them, "down come their pieces-rifles and
muskets,--and probably," as Averell afterward said, "there never was
such a destructive fire for a few minutes. It seemed as though every
man and horse of that battery just laid right down, and died right off!"

It is a dreadful mistake that has been made. And there seems to have
been no excuse for it either. The deliberateness of the Rebel colonel
has given Barry abundant time to have discovered his error. For Griffin
subsequently declared, under oath, that, "After the officer who had been
talking to the regiment had got through, he faced them to the left,
marched them about fifty yards to the woods, then faced them to the
right again, marched them about forty yards toward us, then opened fire
upon us--and that was the last of us!"

It is a terrible blunder. For, up to this moment, the battle is
undeniably ours. And, while the Rebel colonel has been haranguing his
brave men, there has been plenty of time to have "passed the word" along
the line of our batteries, and poured canister into the Rebel regiment
from the whole line of eleven guns, at point-blank range, which must
inevitably have cut it all to pieces. The fate of the day hung balanced
right there and then--with all the chances in favor of McDowell. But
those chances are now reversed. Such are the fickle changes in the
fortunes of battle!

Instead of our batteries cutting to pieces the Rebel Infantry regiment,
the Rebel Infantry regiment has mowed down the gallant artillerists of
our batteries. Hardly a man of them escapes. Death and destruction
reap a wondrous and instant harvest. Wounded, dying, or dead, lie the
brave cannoniers at their guns, officers and men alike hors du combat,
while wounded horses gallop wildly back, with bounding caissons, down
the gentle declivity, carrying disorder, and further danger, in their
mad flight.