came on. It resolved itself into a moving frieze, a wide battle
line of tall men, led by a tall, gaunt general, with blue eyes and
flowing, tawny hair. In front was the battle-flag, red ground and blue
cross. Beside it dipped and rose a blue flag with a single star. The
smoke rolled above, about the line. Bursting overhead, a great shell lit
all with a fiery glare. The frieze began to sing.

"The race is not to them that's got
The longest legs to run,
Nor the battle to that people
That shoots the biggest gun--"

Allan propped himself upon his hands. "Fourth Texas! Fourth
Texas!--Fourth--"

The frieze rushed down the slope of the gully, up again, and on. A foot
came hard on Allan's hand. He did not care. He had a vision of keen,
bronze faces, hands on gun-locks. The long, grey legs went by him with a
mighty stride. Gun-barrel and bayonet gleamed like moon on water. The
battle-flag with the cross, the flag with the single star, spread red
and blue wings. Past him they sped, gigantic, great ensigns of desperate
valour, war goddesses, valkyries, ... rather the great South herself,
the eleven States, Rio Grande to Chesapeake, Potomac to the Gulf! All
the shells were bursting, all the drums were thundering--

The Texans passed, he sank prone on the earth. Other waves he knew were
following--all the waves! Jackson with Ewell, Longstreet, the two Hills.
He thought he saw his own brigade--saw the Stonewall. But it was in
another quarter of the field, and he could not call to it. All the earth
was rocking like a cradle, blindly swinging in some concussion and
conflagration as of world systems.

As dusk descended, the Federal lines were pierced and broken. The Texans
made the breach, but behind them stormed the other waves,--D. H. Hill,
Ewell, the Stonewall Brigade, troops of Longstreet. They blotted out the
triple breastworks; from north, west, and south they mounted in thunder
upon the plateau. They gathered to themselves here twenty-two guns, ten
thousand small arms, twenty-eight hundred prisoners. They took the
plateau. Stubbornly fighting, Fitz John Porter drew off his exhausted
brigades, plunged downward through the forest, toward the Chickahominy.
Across that river, all day long McClellan, with sixty-five thousand men,
had rested behind earthworks, bewildered by Magruder, demonstrating in
front of Richmond with twenty-eight thousand. Now, at t