, "Close up,
Company A! Forward, men!" The battalion column resumed its even
formation in an instant, and tramped unitedly onward, leaving behind it
two quivering corpses and a wounded man who tottered rearward.

Then came more screeches, and a shell exploded over the highroad,
knocking a gunner lifeless from his carriage. The brigade commander
glanced anxiously along his batteries, and addressed a few words to his
chief of artillery. Presently the four Napoleons set forward at a
gallop for the wood, while the four Parrotts wheeled to the right,
deployed, and advanced across the fields, inclining toward the left of
the enemy. Next, Taylor's regiment (the Eighth) halted, fronted, faced
to the right, and filed off in column of march at a double-quick until
it had gained the rear of the Parrotts, when it fronted again, and
pushed on in support. A quarter of a mile further on these guns went
into battery behind the brow of a little knoll, and opened fire. Four
companies of the Eighth spread out to the right as skirmishers, and
commenced stealing toward the ridge, from time to time measuring the
distance with rifle-balls. The remainder of the regiment lay down in
line between the Parrotts and the forest. Far away to the right, five
companies of cavalry showed themselves, manoeuvring as if they proposed
to turn the left flank of the Southerners. The attack on this side was
in form and in operation.

Meantime the Confederate fire had divided. Two guns pounded away at
Taylor's feint, while two shelled the main column. The latter was
struck repeatedly; more than twenty men dropped silent or groaning out
of the hurrying files; but the survivors pushed on without faltering
and without even caring for the wounded. At last a broad belt of green
branches rose between the regiments and the ridge; and the rebel
gunners, unable to see their foe, dropped suddenly into silence.

Here it appeared that the road divided. The highway traversed the
forest, mounted the slope beyond and dissected the enemy's position,
while a branch road turned to the left and skirted the exterior of the
long curve of wooded hillocks. At the fork the battery of Napoleons had
halted, and there it was ordered to remain for the present in quiet.
There, too, the Fourteenth filed in among the dense greenery, threw out
two companies of skirmishers toward the ridge, and pushed slowly after
them into the shadows.

"Get sight of the enemy at once!" was Waldron's last