he right and the fighting was terrific!

By accident I now found Hazen's brigade--or what remained of it--which had
made a half-mile march to add itself to the unrouted at the memorable
Snodgrass Hill. Hazen's first remark to me was an inquiry about that
artillery ammunition that he had sent me for.

It was needed badly enough, as were other kinds: for the last hour or two
of that interminable day Granger's were the only men that had enough
ammunition to make a five minutes' fight. Had the Confederates made one
more general attack we should have had to meet them with the bayonet
alone. I don't know why they did not; probably they were short of
ammunition. I know, though, that while the sun was taking its own time to
set we lived through the agony of at least one death each, waiting for
them to come on.

At last it grew too dark to fight. Then away to our left and rear some of
Bragg's people set up "the rebel yell." It was taken up successively and
passed round to our front, along our right and in behind us again, until
it seemed almost to have got to the point whence it started. It was the
ugliest sound that any mortal ever heard--even a mortal exhausted and
unnerved by two days of hard fighting, without sleep, without rest,
without food and without hope. There was, however, a space somewhere at
the back of us across which that horrible yell did not prolong itself; and
through that we finally retired in profound silence and dejection,
unmolested.

To those of us who have survived the attacks of both Bragg and Time, and
who keep in memory the dear dead comrades whom we left upon that fateful
field, the place means much. May it mean something less to the younger men
whose tents are now pitched where, with bended heads and clasped hands,
God's great angels stood invisible among the heroes in blue and the heroes
in gray, sleeping their last sleep in the woods of Chickamauga.

_1898_.

THE CRIME AT PICKETT'S MILL

There is a class of events which by their very nature, and despite any
intrinsic interest that they may possess, are foredoomed to oblivion. They
are merged in the general story of those greater events of which they were
a part, as the thunder of a billow breaking on a distant beach is unnoted
in the continuous roar. To how many having knowledge of the battles of our
Civil War does the name Pickett's Mill suggest acts of heroism and
devotion performed in scenes of awful carnage to accomplish the
impossibl