raised arms and narrowed eyes. "Look out for the lamp-post--look out for
the lamp-post--look out--Aaahhhh!"

Before long the regiment was moved a hundred yards nearer the
wheat-field. Here it became entangled in the ebb of a charge--the
brigade which had rushed by coming back, piecemeal, broken and driven by
an iron flail. It would reform and charge again, but now there was
confusion. All the field was confused, dismal and dreadful, beneath the
orange-tinted smoke. The smoke rolled and billowed, a curtain of strange
texture, now parting, now closing, and when it parted disclosing
immemorial Death and Wounds with some attendant martial pageantry. The
commands were split as by wedges, the uneven ground driving them
asunder, and the belching guns. They went up to hell mouth, brigade by
brigade, even regiment by regiment, and in the breaking and reforming
and twilight of the smoke, through the falling of officers and the
surging to and fro, the troops became interwoven, warp of one division,
woof of another. The sound was shocking; when, now and then there fell a
briefest interval it was as though the world had stopped, had fallen
into a gulf of silence.

Edward Cary found beside him a man from another regiment, a small,
slight fellow, young and simple. A shock of wheat gave both a moment's
protection. "Hot work!" said Edward, with his fine camaraderie. "You
made a beautiful charge. We almost thought you would take them."

The other looked at him vacantly. "I added up figures in the old
warehouse," he said, in a high, thin voice. "I added up figures in the
old warehouse, and when I went home at night I used to read plays. I
added up figures in the old warehouse--Don't you remember Hotspur? I
always liked him, and that part--

'To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon;
Or dive into the bottom of the deep--'"

He stood up. Edward rose to his knees and put out a hand to draw him
down. "It's enough to make you crazy, I'll confess--but you mustn't
stand up like that!"

The downward drawing hand was too late. There were blue sharpshooters in
a wood in front. A ball entered the clerk's breast and he sank down
behind the wheat. "I added up figures in the old warehouse," he again
told Cary, "and when I went home at night I read plays--"

The figure stiffened in Edward's grasp. He laid it down, and from behind
the wheat shock watched a grey battery in process of being knocked to
pieces. It had arrived i