blue torrent--McClellan
and his eighty-seven thousand. Lee met it with a narrow grey sea--not
thirty thousand men, for A. P. Hill was yet upon the road from Harper's
Ferry. In Berserker madness, torrent and uproar, clashed the two
colours.

There was a small white Dunkard church with a background of dark woods.
It was north of Sharpsburg, near the Hagerstown turnpike, and it marked
the Confederate left. Stonewall Jackson held the left. Before him was
Fighting Joe Hooker with Meade and Doubleday and Ricketts.

From a knoll behind Sharpsburg the commander-in-chief looked from
Longstreet on the right to D. H. Hill, and from Hill to Jackson. He
looked to the Harper's Ferry Road, but he did not see what he wished to
see--A. P. Hill's red battle shirt. "Artillery Hell" had begun. There
was enormous thunder, enormous drifting murk. All the country side, all
the little Maryland villages and farmhouses blenched beneath that sound.
Lee put down his field glass. He stood, calm and grand, the smoke and
uproar at his feet. The Rockbridge Guns came by, going to some indicated
quarter of the field. In thunder they passed below the knoll, the iron
war-beasts, the gunners with them, black with powder and grime! All
saluted; but one, a very young, very ragged, very begrimed private at
the guns, lingered a moment after his fellows, stood very straight at
the salute and with an upward look, then with quickened step caught up
with his gun and disappeared into the smoke ahead. Lee answered a glance
of his chief of staff. "Yes. It was my youngest son. It was Rob."

The Dunkard church! In this war it was strange how many and how ghastly
battles surged about small country churches! The Prince of Peace, if he
indwelled here, must have bowed his head and mourned. Sunrise struck
upon its white walls; then came a shell and pierced them. The church
became the core of the turmoil, the white, still reef against which beat
the wild seas in storm.

Fighting Joe Hooker came out of the North Wood. His battle flags were
bright and he had drums and brazen horns. Loud and in time, regular as a
beat in music, came the Huzzah! Huzzah! of his fourteen thousand men. He
crossed the turnpike, he came down on the Dunkard church. "Yaii! Yaaaii!
Yaaaaaaaaiihhh!" yelled the grey sea,--no time at all, only fierce
determination. Sometimes a grey drum beat, or bugle called, but there
was no other music, save the thunder of the guns and the long rattle,
never ceasing,