e smoke cleared, writhed men
and horses, but the gun was dragged off. Through the rain of shells the
battery gained a lift of ground, toiled up it, placed the guns,
unlimbered and began to fire. A South Carolina brigade started with a
yell from the woods to the right, tore in a dust cloud across the old
fields, furrowed with gullies, and was swallowed in the forest about the
creek which laved the base of the Federal position. This rose from the
level like a Gibraltar, and about it now beat a wild shouting and rattle
of musketry. Allan rose to his knees, then to his feet, then, drawn as
by a magnet, crept through a finger of sumach and sassafras,
outstretched from the wood, to a better vantage point just in rear of
the battery.

Behind him, through the woods, came a clatter of horses' hoofs. It was
met and followed by cheering. Turning his head, he saw a general and his
staff, and though he had never seen Lee he knew that this was Lee, and
himself began to cheer. The commander-in-chief lifted his grey hat, came
down the dim, overarched, aisle-like road, between the cheering troops.
With his staff he left the wood for the open, riding beneath the shelter
by the finger of sumach and sassafras, toward the battery. He saw Allan,
and reined up iron-grey Traveller. "You do not belong to this
regiment.--A scout? General Jackson's?--Ah, well, I expect General
Jackson to strike those people on the right any moment now!" He rode up
to the battery. The shells were raining, bursting above, around. In the
shelter of the hill the battery horses had at first, veteran,
undisturbed, cropped the parched grass, but now one was wounded and now
another. An arm was torn from a gunner. A second, stooping over a limber
chest, was struck between the shoulders, crushed, flesh and bone, into
pulp. The artillery captain came up to the general-in-chief. "General
Lee, won't you go away? Gentlemen, won't you tell him that there's
danger?"

The staff reinforced the statement, but without avail. General Lee shook
his head, and with his field-glasses continued to gaze toward the left,
whence should arise the dust, the smoke, the sound of Jackson's flanking
movement. There was no sign on the left, but here, in the centre, the
noise from the woods beyond the creek was growing infernal. He lowered
the glass. "Captain Chamberlayne, will you go tell General Longstreet--"

Out of the thunder-filled woods, back from creek and swamp and briar and
slashing, fr