her side of the sunken road and braced himself against
the bank, putting his arm about a twisted, protruding cedar. D. H.
Hill's North Carolinians hung a moment, tall, gaunt, yelling, then
swooped down into the sunken lane, passed over the dead, mounted the
other ragged bank and went on. Stafford waited to hear the shock. It
came; full against a deep blue wave. Richardson had been killed and
Hancock commanded here. The blue wave was strong. The sound of the melee
was frightful; then out of it burst a loud huzzahing. Stafford
straightened himself. The grey were coming back, and after them the
blue. Almost before he could unclasp his arm from the cedar, the first
spray of gaunt, exhausted, bleeding men came over and down into the
sunken lane. All the grey wave followed. At the moment there outburst a
renewed and tremendous artillery battle. The smoke drifting across the
Bloody Lane was like the fall of night, a night of cloud and storm.
Orange flashes momentarily lit the scene, and the sullen thunders
rolled. The grey, gaunt and haggard, but their colours with them,
overpassed the dead and wounded, now choking the sunken road. Behind
them were heard the blue, advancing and huzzahing. The grey wave
remounted the bank down which it plunged fifteen minutes before. At the
top it stayed a moment, thin and grey, spectral in the smoke pall, the
battle flags like hovering, crimson birds. A line of flame leaped, one
long crackle of musketry, then it resumed its retreat, falling back on
the west wood. The blue, checked a moment by that last volley, now
poured down into the sunken road, overpassed the thick ranks of the dead
and wounded, mounted, and swept on in a counter charge.

Maury Stafford had left the cedar and started across with the last
broken line of the grey. Going down the crumbling bank his spur caught
in a gnarled and sprawling root. The check was absolute, and brought
him violently to his knees. Before he could free himself the grey had
reached the opposite crest, fired its volley, and gone on. He started to
follow. He heard the blue coming, and it was expedient to get out of
this trap. Before him, from the figures covering the earth like thrown
jackstraws, an arm was suddenly lifted. The hand clutched at him,
passing. He looked down. It was a boy of nineteen with a ghastly face.
The voice came up: "Whoever you are, you're alive and well, and I'm
dying. You'll take it and put a stamp on it and mail it, won't you? I'm