fell
beneath the wheels. The big iron tire crushed his neck and the blood
from his mouth splashed into John's face. The men on the guns didn't
turn their heads to look back. Their eyes were searching the brown hills
before them.

The long roll beat from a thousand drums, the call of the buglers rang
over the valley--and then the strange, solemn silence that comes before
the shock--the moment when cowards collapse and the brave falter.

John Vaughan's soul rose in a fierce challenge to fate. If he died it
was well; if he lived it was the same. He had ceased to care.

At exactly eight-thirty, General Meade hurled his division, supported by
Doubleday and Gibbon, against Jackson's weakest point, the right of the
Confederate lines. Their aim was to seize an opposing hill. The curving
lines of grey were silent until the charging hosts were well advanced in
deadly range and then the brown hills flamed and roared in front and on
their flanks.

The blue lines were mowed down in swaths as though the giant figure of
Death had suddenly swung his scythe from the fog banks in the sky.

Again and again came those awful volleys of musketry and artillery
cross-firing on the rushing lines. The men staggered and recovered,
reformed and charged again over the dead bodies of their comrades
carrying the crest for a moment. They captured a flag and a handful of
prisoners only to be driven back down the hill with losses more
frightful in retreat than when they breasted the storm.

In the centre the tragedy was repeated with results even more terrible.
As the charging lines fell back, staggering, bleeding and cut to pieces,
fresh brigades threw down their knapsacks, fixed their bayonets and
charged through their own melting ranks into the jaws of Death to fall
back in their turn.

With a mighty shout the blue line swept across the railroad, took the
ditches at the point of the bayonet and captured two hundred grey
prisoners. But only for a moment. From the supporting line rang the
rebel yell and they were hurled back, shattered and cut to pieces.
These retreats were veritable shambles of slaughter. The curved lines on
the hills raking them with their deadly accurate cross-fire.

John Vaughan's regiment leaped to the support of the falling blue waves.

A wounded soldier had propped himself against a stone and smiled as the
cheering men swept by. He could rest a while now.

A battery of artillery suddenly blazed from the hill-crest and