n this quarter of the field in a wild gallop,
and with a happy insouciance had unlimbered and run up the guns back of
a little crest topped with sumach, taking pains meanwhile to assure the
infantry that now it was safe. The infantry had grinned. "Like you
first-rate, artillery! Willing to bet on the gunners, but the guns are a
_leetle_ small and few. Don't know that we feel so _awful_ safe!"

The grey began. Four shells flew up the long slope and burst among the
iron rows that made a great triple crown for Malvern Hill. The grey
gunners cheered, and the appreciative infantry cheered, and the first
began to reload while the second, flat in scrub and behind the wheat,
condescended to praise. "Artillery does just about as well as can be
expected! Awful old-fashioned arm--but well-meaning.... Look
out--look... Eeehhh!"

The iron crown that had been blazing toward other points of the compass
now blazed toward this. Adversity came to the insouciant grey battery,
adversity quickening to disaster. The first thunder blast thickened to a
howling storm of shrapnel, grape, and canister.

At the first gun gunner No. 1, ramming home a charge, was blown into
fragments; at the second the arm holding the sponge staff was severed
from gunner No. 3's shoulder. A great shell, bursting directly over the
third, killed two men and horribly mangled others; the carriage of the
fourth was crushed and set on fire. This in the beginning of the storm;
as it swelled, total destruction threatened from the murk. The captain
went up and down. "Try it a little longer, men. Try it a little longer,
men. We've got to make up in quality, you know. We've got to make up in
quality, you know. Marse Robert's looking--I see him over there! Try it
a little longer--try it a little longer."

An aide arrived. "For God's sake, take what you've got left away! Yes,
it's an order. Your being massacred won't help. Look out--Look--"

No one in battle ever took account of time or saw any especial reason
for being, now here, and now in quite a different place, or ever knew
exactly how the places had been exchanged. Edward was practically
certain that he had taken part in a charge, that his brigade had driven
a body of blue infantry from a piece of woods. At any rate they were no
longer in the wheat field, but in a shady wood, where severed twigs and
branches floated pleasantly down. Lying flat, chin on hand, he watched a
regiment storm and take a thick abattis--felled