and heard was now up. It took position on a rise
of ground and began firing, but the guns were but smoothbore
six-pounders and the ammunition was ghastly bad. The shells exploded
well before they reached the enemy's lines. The opposing blue
battery--Atwell's--strongly posted and throwing canister from
ten-pounder Parrotts--might have laughed had there not been--had there
not been more and more and yet more of grey infantry! Taylor with his
Louisianians, the First Maryland, Ewell, Winder with the Stonewall,
grey, grey, with gleaming steel, with glints of red, pouring from the
woods, through the fields--the Pennsylvanians, working the battery, did
not laugh; they were pale, perhaps, beneath the powder grime. But pale
or sanguine they bravely served their guns and threw their canister,
well directed, against the mediaeval engines on the opposite knoll.

Shouting an order, there now galloped to these Jackson's Chief of
Artillery, Colonel Crutchfield. The outclassed smoothbores limbered up
and drew sulkily away; Courtenay's Battery, including a rifled gun,
arrived in dust and thunder to take their place. Behind came
Brockenborough. The reeking battery horses bent to it; the drivers
yelled. The rumbling wheels, the leaping harness, the dust that all
raised, made a cortege and a din as of Dis himself. The wheel stopped,
the men leaped to the ground, the guns were planted, the limbers
dropped, the horses loosed and taken below the hill. A loud cannonade
began.

Behind the screen of smoke, in the level fields, four Louisiana
regiments formed in line of battle. A fifth moved to the left, its
purpose to flank the Federal battery. As for the cavalry, it appeared to
have sunk into the earth--and yet, even with the thought, out of the
blue distance toward McCoy's Ford, on the South Fork arose a tremendous
racket! A railway station, Buckton--was there, and a telegraph line, and
two companies of Pennsylvania infantry, and two locomotives with steam
up. At the moment there were also Ashby and the 7th Virginia, bent upon
burning the railroad bridge, cutting the telegraph, staying the
locomotives, and capturing the Pennsylvanians. The latter tried to
escape by the locomotives; tried twice and failed twice. The forming
infantry before Front Royal knew by the rumpus that Ashby was over
there, below the Massanuttons. There ran a rumour, too, that the 2d
Virginia cavalry under Munford was somewhere to the northeast, blocking
the road to Man