s.

There was a leafy hollow ahead, filled with slender, willow-trees,
many of them broken off, shot, torn, twisted, and splintered. Dead
soldiers lay about under the smoke, their dirty shirts or naked
skin visible between jacket and belt; to the left on a sparsely
wooded elevation, the slope of which was scarred, showing dry red
sand and gravel, a gun stood, firing obliquely across the gully
into the woods. Long, wavering, irregular rings of smoke shot out,
remaining intact and floating like the rings from a smoker's pipe,
until another rush and blast of flame scattered them.

The other gun had been dismounted and lay on its side, one wheel in
the air, helpless, like some monster sprawling with limbs stiffened
in death. Behind it, crouched close, squatted some infantry
soldiers, firing from the cover of the wreckage. Behind every
tree, every stump, every inequality, lay infantry, dead, wounded,
or alive and cautiously firing. Several took advantage of the
fallen battery horses for shelter. Only one horse of that gun-team
remained alive, and the gunners had lashed the prolonge to the
trail of the overturned cannon and to the poor horse's collar, and
were trying to drag the piece away with the hope of righting it.

This manoeuvre dislodged the group of infantry soldiers who had
taken shelter there, and, on all fours, they began crawling and
worming and scuffling about among the dead leaves, seeking another
shelter from the pelting hail of lead.

There was nothing to be seen beyond the willow gully except smoke,
set grotesquely with phantom trees, through which the enemy's
fusillade sparkled and winked like a long level line of fire-flies
in the mist.

The stretcher bearers crept about gathering up the wounded who
called to them out of the smoke. Ailsa, on her knees, made her way
toward a big cavalryman whose right leg was gone at the thigh.

She did what she could, called for a stretcher, then, crouching
close under the bank of raw earth, set her canteen to his blackened
lips and held it for him.

"Don't be discouraged," she said quietly, "they'll bring another
stretcher in a few moments. I'll stay here close beside you until
they come."

The cavalryman was dying; she saw it; he knew it. And his swollen
lips moved.

"Don't waste time with me," he managed to say.

"Then--will you lie very still and not move?"

"Yes; only don't let the horse step on me."

She drew her little note-book and pencil f