ring grew stronger and,
as if in response, the road to the Union rear now turned into a stream
of living blue, with cavalry madly galloping and sweating infantry
hurrying forward as fast as their legs could carry them.

"Look, Virgie, look!" her father cried, holding her head a little way
above the wall. "See those bayonets shining back there across the road.
A whole regiment of infantry. And they're going up against our _men
across an open field!_ By Jiminy, but those Yanks will get a mustard
bath. Ah-hah!" he chortled, as a roar of musketry broke out. "I told you
so! Our boys are after them. Good work! Good work!"

But again a shell passed over them and again the world was filled with
that awful whining, shrieking sound.

"Daddy," the child cried, with quivering lips, but still dry eyed. "I
don't _like_ those things. I don't _like_'em."

"There, there, darling," he comforted as they shrank closer under the
protection of the wall. "Keep down under my arm and they won't bother
you."

As he spoke a twig with a fresh yellow break in it fell from a tree and
struck his upturned face. He winced at the thought that the bullet
might have flown a few feet lower. And meanwhile the sound of the firing
came steadily closer.

"By Jove!" he murmured to himself, "it's a bigger rumpus than I
thought."

This indeed was true. What had at first promised to be only a skirmish
between the outposts of the two entrenched armies, now developed into a
general engagement covering a space of half a mile along the line. A
reconnoitering force of Federal cavalry had ridden too close to the
rifle pits of the Confederates, and, as Morrison himself expressed it,
"the hornets came out and began to sting."

Major Foster, commanding a larger force of cavalry, rode out in support
of his reconnoitering party, and found himself opposed, not by a
straggling line of Rebel pickets, but by a moving wall of tattered gray,
the units of which advanced on a low-bent run, crouching behind some
bush or stone, to fire, reload and advance again.

An aide raced back to the Union lines to ask for help in support of
Foster's slender force of cavalry; and thus the order came to Morrison
to join the detachment and hold the enemy until reinforcements could be
formed and pushed to the firing line.

The delay, however, was well nigh fatal for Morrison and Major Foster,
and from the point where Cary and little Virgie watched, the case of the
Union horsemen seemed