blushing a trifle--"but I'll stake my life upon its truth in the
main."

The colonel turned toward a small knot of officers some distance away.
"Lieutenant Williams!" he shouted.

One of the officers detached himself from the group and coming forward
saluted, saying: "Pardon me, Colonel, I thought you had been informed.
Williams is dead down there by the gun. What can I do, sir?"

Lieutenant Williams was the aide who had had the pleasure of conveying
to the officer in charge of the gun his brigade commander's
congratulations.

"Go," said the colonel, "and direct the withdrawal of that gun
instantly. No--I'll go myself."

He strode down the declivity toward the rear of the Notch at a
break-neck pace, over rocks and through brambles, followed by his little
retinue in tumultuous disorder. At the foot of the declivity they
mounted their waiting animals and took to the road at a lively trot,
round a bend and into the Notch. The spectacle which they encountered
there was appalling!

Within that defile, barely broad enough for a single gun, were piled the
wrecks of no fewer than four. They had noted the silencing of only the
last one disabled--there had been a lack of men to replace it quickly
with another. The debris lay on both sides of the road; the men had
managed to keep an open way between, through which the fifth piece was
now firing. The men?--they looked like demons of the pit! All were
hatless, all stripped to the waist, their reeking skins black with
blotches of powder and spattered with gouts of blood. They worked like
madmen, with rammer and cartridge, lever and lanyard. They set their
swollen shoulders and bleeding hands against the wheels at each recoil
and heaved the heavy gun back to its place. There were no commands; in
that awful environment of whooping shot, exploding shells, shrieking
fragments of iron, and flying splinters of wood, none could have been
heard. Officers, if officers there were, were indistinguishable; all
worked together--each while he lasted--governed by the eye. When the gun
was sponged, it was loaded; when loaded, aimed and fired. The colonel
observed something new to his military experience--something horrible
and unnatural: the gun was bleeding at the mouth! In temporary default
of water, the man sponging had dipped his sponge into a pool of
comrade's blood. In all this work there was no clashing; the duty of the
instant was obvious. When one fell, another, looking a trifle cle