and skilful soldier, withdrew from the triple lines his
decimated regiments, put others in their places, scoured with the hail
of his twenty-two batteries the plain of the Confederate centre. All the
attack was here--all the attack was here--and the grey brigades were
thinning like mist wreaths. The dead and wounded choked field and gully
and wood and swamp. Allan struck his hands together. What had
happened--what was the matter? How long had he lain here? Two hours, at
the least--and always it was A. P. Hill's battle, and always the grey
brigades with a master courage dashed themselves against the slope of
fire, and always the guns repelled them. It was growing late. The sun
could not be seen. Plain and woods were darkening, darkening and filled
with groaning. It was about him like a melancholy wind, the groaning. He
raised himself on his hands and saw how many indeed were scattered in
the sedge, or in the bottom of the yellow gully, or slanted along its
sides. He had not before so loudly heard the complaining that they made,
and for a moment the brain wondered why. Then he was aware that the air
was less filled with missiles, that the long musketry rattle and the
baying of the war dogs was a little hushed. Even as he marked this the
lull grew more and more perceptible. He heard the moaning of the
wounded, because now the ear could take cognizance.

The shadow deepened. A horse, with a blood-stained saddle, unhurt
himself, approached him, stood nickering for a moment, then panic-struck
again, lashed out with his heels and fled. All the plain, the sedge
below, the rolling canopy above, was tinged with reddish umber. The
sighing wind continued, but the noise of firing died and died. For all
the moaning of the wounded, there seemed to fall a ghastly silence.

Over Allan came a feeling as of a pendulum forever stopped, as of Time
but a wreck on the shore of Space, and Space a deserted coast, an
experiment of some Power who found it ineffective and tossed it away.
The Now and Here, petrified forever, desolate forever, an obscure bubble
in the sea of being, a faint tracing on the eternal Mind to be overlaid
and forgotten--here it rested, and would rest. The field would stay and
the actors would stay, both forever as they were, standing, lying, in
motion or at rest, suffering, thirsting, tasting the sulphur and feeling
the heat, held here forever in a vise, grey shadows suffering like
substance, knowing the lost battle.... A