in he clearly saw through his glasses the long lines of men in
blue along the slopes and on the crest of Cemetery Hill. He marked, too,
there, at the highest point, a clump of trees waving their summer green
in the hot sunshine. Turning his glasses yet further he saw the massed
artillery on Little Round Top, and the gunners leaning on their guns.
A house, set on fire purposely or by shells, was burning brightly,
like some huge torch to light the way to death.

"You told me they were preparing for a charge," he said to Dalton.

"So they are, Harry. Pickett's men, who have not been here long,
are forming up in the rear, but their advance will be preceded by a
cannonade. You can see them wheeling guns into line."

Lee, with Hill and Longstreet, had recently ridden along the lines
followed by the older staff officers, and often shells and the bullets
of sharpshooters had struck about them, but they remained unhurt.
Now Lee stopped at one of his old points of observation. It was now
about one o'clock in the afternoon, and as the last gun took its
place the whole artillery of the Southern army opened with a fire so
tremendous that Harry felt the earth trembling, and he was compelled
to put his fingers in his ears lest he be deafened.

A storm of metal flew across the valley toward the Northern ranks,
but the guns there did not reply yet. The Union troops lay close behind
their intrenchments and mostly the storm beat itself to pieces on the
side of the hill. The smoke soon became so great that Harry could not
tell even with glasses what was going on in the enemy's ranks, but he
inferred from the fact that they were not yet replying that they were
not suffering much.

But in a quarter of an hour the tremendous cannonade was suddenly
doubled in volume. The Union guns were now answering. Two hundred
cannon facing one another across the valley were fighting the most
terrible artillery duel ever known in America. The air was filled with
shells, shot, grape, shrapnel, canister and every form of deadly missile.

Harry and Dalton sprang to cover, as some of the shells struck about
them, but they stood up again when they saw that Lee was talking calmly
with his generals.

The Southern fire was accurate. General Meade's headquarters were
riddled. Many important officers were wounded, but the Northern gunners,
superb always, never flinched from their guns. They fell fast, but
others took their places. Guns were dismo