e gun had been
snatched up, then fired all its chambers at the oncoming hordes in gray.

"One more stand," he yelled. "One more--"

Beside him the color sergeant gave a moan and bent in the middle like a
hinge. Another slackening of his body and the stricken bearer of the
flag plunged from his saddle, the colors trailing in the dust.

Morrison spurred his mount toward the fallen man, bending to grasp the
colors from the tight gripped hand; but even as he bent, his horse went
down. He leaped to save himself, then turned once more, snatched at the
flag of his routed regiment and waved it above his head.

"_Stand, boys, and give it to 'em!_"

A shout went up--not from the men he sought to rally to his flag, but
from those who would win it at a cost of blood, for his troopers were
running on a backward road, and Morrison fought alone. The "gray devils"
were all around him now, and he backed against the wall, fighting till
his sword was sent spinning from his fist by the blow of a musket butt;
then, grasping the color-pole in both his hands, he parried bayonet
thrusts and saber strokes, panting, breathing in hot, labored gasps, and
cursing his enemies from a hoarse, parched throat.

A hideous, unequal fight it was, and soon Lieutenant-Colonel Morrison
must fall as his colors fell and be trampled in the dust; yet now
through an eddying drift of smoke came another ragged Southerner, a
grim, gaunt man whose voice was as hoarse as Morrison's, who had grasped
a saber from the blood stained rocks and waved it above his head.

"Back, boys! Don't kill that man!"

Among them he plunged till he reached the side of Morrison, then turned
and faced the brothers of his country and his State. With a downward
stroke he arrested a saber thrusts and then struck upward at a rifle's
mouth as it spit its deadly flame.

"Don't kill him! Do you hear?" he cried, as he beat at the bayonet
points. "I'm Cary! Herbert Cary!--_on the staff of General Lee!_"

For an instant the attacking Southerners stood aghast at the sight of
this raging man in gray who defended a Yankee officer; and yet he had
made no saber stroke to wound or kill; instead, his weapon had come
between their own and the life of a well-nigh helpless foe. For a moment
more they paused and looked with wondering eyes, and in that moment
their victory was changed to rout.

A bugle blared. A thundering rush of hoof beats sounded on the road, and
the Union reenforcements swept aro