Spaulding, I see a column crossing, infantry and artillery, a man on a black horse directing, and a man on a grey horse with a bloody cloth—’ And then he stopped speaking and stared, the colour going out of his face and his eyes starting from his head. And presently he just slipped like water down between them and sat upon the earth. ‘Great God!’ he said, ‘there isn’t anything there!’—So they took him back to headquarters, the drums still beating and everybody getting into ranks—” “What did they do to him?” “Well, if he’d been a drinking man he’d have been drumhead court-martialled and shot. But he wasn’t—he was a nice, clean, manly kind of young fellow, a great mathematician, and the boys all liked him, and his officers, too. And he was so covered with confusion ’twas pitiful. The general’s a mighty good man. He said those things happened sometimes, and he quoted Shakespeare that there are more experiences in heaven and earth—or words to that effect. Spaulding was put under arrest, and there was enquiry and all that, but at the last he was given a caution and sent back to his regiment. But he kind of pined away and took to mooning, and in the next battle he was killed—and killed, that was the funny thing, by a pistol shot from a man on a grey horse with a bloody handkerchief tied round his head! He shot Spaulding through the brain.” The sun pushed a red rim above the eastern horizon. The day’s work began. Fighting—and fighting—and fighting again on Kennesaw and over the rolling country from which Kennesaw arose! On the twentieth, Wheeler with a thousand horsemen crashed against and drove a force of blue cavalry. On the twenty-second, on the Powder Spring road, Hood struck Schofield and Hooker. The divisions of Hindman and Stevenson were engaged here, advancing with heroism under a plunging fire, musketry and artillery, and driving the blue from their first to their second line of entrenchments. The ground was fearfully difficult. The blue had everywhere epaulements from which they brought to bear upon the charging grey a terrible raking fire of grape and canister. Stevenson’s men fell thick and fast; when night laid her stilling hand upon the guns, he had lost in killed and wounded eight hundred and seventy men. On the twenty-fourth, the blue came in line of battle against Hardee, and were repulsed. On the twenty-fifth, they again struck Stevenson, and were repulsed. All day the twenty-sixth there was bitter skirmishing. On the twenty-seventh, upstormed the battle of Kennesaw Mountain.