es
rattled by on its way to the rear. A solid shot plumped squarely into
the load.

John saw picks, spades, shovels and negroes suddenly fill the air. Every
negro lit on his feet and his legs were running when he struck the
ground. They reached the tall timber before the last pick fell.

The regiments were going into battle double quick, but they were not
going so fast they couldn't laugh.

"Hurry up men!" the Colonel called. "Hurry up, let's get in there and
help 'em!"

A moment more and they were in it.

The man beside John threw up both hands and dropped with the dull,
unmistakable thud of death--the soldier who has been in battle knows the
sickening sound.

They were thrown around the Third Corps battery to protect their guns
which had been dragged to a place more securely within the lines. Still
their gunners kept falling one by one--falling ominously at the crack of
a single gun in the woods. A Confederate sharpshooter had climbed a tree
and was picking them off.

A tall Westerner spoke to the Colonel:

"Let me go huntin' for him!"

The Commander nodded and John went with him--why? He asked himself the
question before he had taken ten steps through the shadowy underbrush.
The answer was plain. He knew the truth at once. The elemental brutal
instinct of the hunter had kindled at the flash in that Westerner's eye.
It would be a hunt worth while--the game was human.

For five minutes they crept through the bushes hiding from tree to tree
in the open spaces. They searched the tops in vain, when suddenly a
piece of white oak bark fluttered down from the sky and struck the
ground at their feet.

The Westerner smiled at John and stood motionless:

"Well, I'm damned!"

They waited breathlessly, afraid to look up into the boughs of the
towering oak beneath which they were standing.

"Don't move now!" the man from the West cried, "and I'll pot him."

Slowly he stepped backward, softly, noiselessly, his eye fixed in the
treetop, his gun raised and finger on the trigger.

He stopped, aimed, and fired.

John looked up and saw the grey figure fall back from the tree trunk and
plunge downward, bounding from limb to limb and striking the ground
within ten feet of where he stood with heavy thud. The blood was gushing
in red streams from his nose and mouth.

They turned and hurried back to their lines--another fierce attack was
being made on those guns. The men in grey charged and drove them a
hundred feet