His foot felt for the top edge of the boulder. He sprang upon it, and faced with suddenness the young dead. The oncoming line saw him stand as if frozen, then with a stiff jerk up went the sword again. “Come on! Come on!” he cried, and plunging from the boulder continued to mount the desired slope. His men, close behind him, also encountered the dead on the altar slab. “Good God! It’s Lieutenant —— It’s his son!” But in front the colonel’s changed voice continued its crying, “Come on! Come on! Come on!” A stone wall, held by the grey, leaped fire, rattled and smoked. It did this at short intervals for a long while, a brigade of the enemy choosing to charge at like intervals. The grey’s question was a question of ammunition. So long as the ammunition held out, so would they and the wall. They sent out foragers for cartridges. Four men, having secured a quantity from an impatiently sympathetic reserve, heaped them in a blanket, made a large bundle, and slung it midway of a musket. One man took the butt, another the muzzle, and as they had to reckon with sharpshooters going back, the remaining two marched in front. All double-quicked where the exposure was not extreme, and ran where it was. The echoing goal grew larger—as did also a clump of elms at right angles with the wall. Vanguard cocked its eye. “Buzzards in those trees, boys—blue buzzards!” Vanguard pitched forward as he spoke. The three ran on. Ten yards, and the man who had been second and was now first, was picked off. The two ran on, the cartridges between them. “We’re goners!” said the one, and the other nodded as he ran. There was a grey battery somewhere in the smoke, and now by chance or intention it flung into the air a shell that shrieked its way straight to the clump of elms, and exploded in the round of leaf and branch. The sharpshooters were stilled. “Moses and the prophets!” said the runners. “That’s a last year’s bird’s nest!” Altogether the foragers brought in ammunition enough to serve the grey wall’s immediate purpose. It cracked and flamed for another while, and then the blue brigade ceased its charges and went elsewhere. It went thinned—oh, thinned!—in numbers. The grey waited a little for the smoke to lift, and then it mounted the wall. “And the ground before us,” says a survivor, “was the most heavenly blue!”