Panting, devastated, powder-blackened, bleeding, the Sixty-fifth felt for its cartridges, bit them, loaded, fired on a dark blue wedge coming out of a wood. The wedge expanded, formed a line, came on with hurrahs. At the same instant a monster cylindrical shell, whooping like a demon, hurled itself against the grey battery. A second gun was put out of the fight. The sky went in flashes of red, the air in toppling crashes as of buildings in earthquake. When the smoke cleared, the blue had gone back again, but dead or dying in the sedge were many grey men. Colonel Erskine, slight, fiery, stood out, his hand pressing his arm from which blood was streaming. “Sixty-fifth Virginia! You’ve got as splendid a record as is in this army! You can’t run. There isn’t anywhere to run to.—White flag? No—o! You don’t raise a white flag while I command!—Put your back to the wall and continue your record!” “All right, sir,” said the Sixty-fifth. “All right—Oh, the colonel!—oh, the colonel—” The colonel fell, pierced through the brain. A captain took his place, but the captains, too, were falling.... Billy Maydew and Allan Gold saw each other through a rift in the smoke. They were close together. “Billy,” said Allan, “I wish you were out of this.” “I reckon it’s the end,” said Billy, loading. “You look all kind of shining and bright, Allan.—Don’t you reckon Heaven’ll be something like Thunder Run?” “Yes, I do. Sairy and Tom, and the flowers and Christianna—” “And all the boys,” said Billy, “and the colonel—Here air the darn Yanks again—” A short-range engagement changed into hand-to-hand fighting. Already the aiding battery had suffered horribly. Now with a shout the blue pushed against it, seizing and silencing one of the two remaining guns. The grey infantry thrust back by the same onset, the grey artillerymen beaten from the guns, were now as one—four hundred grey men, perhaps, in a death clutch with twice their number. Down the road broke out a wilder noise of fighting—it would seem, somehow, that there was an access of forces.... The blue, immediate swarm was somehow pushed back. Another was seen detaching itself. The ranking officer was now a captain. He hurried along the front of the torn and panting line. “Don’t let’s fail, men!—Don’t let’s fail! Everybody at home—everybody at home knows we couldn’t—Give them as good as we take! Here they come!—Now—now!—”