e than any that had gone before. Generals and colonels
led them in person. Barksdale, young, but with snow-white hair, was
riding at the very front of the line, and he fell, dying, in the Union
ranks.

The Southern charge was stopped again on the left wing of the Union army,
and with the coming of the night the battle there sank, but elsewhere
the South was meeting with greater success. Ewell, making a renewed and
fierce attack at sunset, drove in the Northern right, and, seconded by
Early, took their defenses there. But the darkness was coming fast,
and although the firing went on for a long time, it ceased at last,
with the two enemies still face to face and the battle drawn.

Harry, who had expected to see a glorious victory won by the setting of
the sun, was deeply depressed. His youth did not keep him from seeing
that very little advantage had been won in that awful conflict of
the afternoon, and he saw also that the Army of the Potomac had been
fighting as if it had been improved by defeat. Nor had Lee thrown in
his whole force where it was needed most. If Jackson had only been
there! Harry pictured his swift flank movement, his lightning stroke,
and the crumpling up of the enemy. Jackson loomed larger than ever now
to his disappointed and excited mind.

Harry had been all day long and far into the night on Seminary Hill.
Often he had scarcely moved for an hour, and now, when the firing ceased
and he stood up and tried to peer into the valley of death, he found his
limbs so stiff for a minute or two that he could scarcely move. His
eyes ached and his throat was raw from smoke and the fumes of burned
gunpowder. But as he shook himself and stretched his muscles, he
regained firmness of both mind and body.

"We didn't win much," he said to Dalton.

"Not to-day, but we will to-morrow. Harry, wasn't it awful? It looks
to me down there like a pit of destruction."

And Dalton described it truly. The losses of the day before had been
doubled. Thirty thousand men on the two sides had now fallen, and there
was another day to come.

Harry saw that the generals themselves were assailed by doubts and
fears. He with other young staff officers witnessed the council of
Lee and his leading officers in the moonlight on Seminary Ridge. Some
spoke of retreat. A drawn battle in the enemy's country, and with an
inferiority of numbers, was for them equivalent to a defeat. Others
pointed out, however, that whil