As he stooped, to Crittenden's horror, Bob pitched to the ground--threshing around like an animal that has received a blow on the head. Without a thought, without consciousness of his own motive or his act, Crittenden sprang to his feet and dashed for Bob. Within ten feet of the boy, his toe caught in a root and he fell headlong. As he scrambled to his feet, he saw Sharpe making for him--thinking that he had been shot down--and, as he turned, with Bob in his arms, half a dozen men, including Grafton and his own Lieutenant, were retreating back into cover--all under the same impulse and with the same motive having started for him, too. Behind a tree, Crittenden laid Bob down, still turning his head from side to side helplessly. There was a trail of blood across his temple, and, wiping it away, he saw that the bullet had merely scraped along the skull without penetrating it. In a moment, Bob groaned, opened his eyes, sat up, looked around with rolling eyes, grunted once or twice, straightened out, and reached for his gun, shaking his head. "Gimme drink, Ole Cap'n, please, suh." Crittenden handed him his canteen, and Bob drank and rose unsteadily to his feet. "Dat ain't nuttin'," he said, contemptuously, feeling along the wound. "'Tain't nigh as bad as mule kick. 'Tain't nuttin', 't all." And then he almost fell. "Go back, Bob." "All right, Ole Cap'n, I reckon I'll jus' lay down heah little while," he said, stretching out behind the tree. And Grafton reached over for Crittenden's hand. He was getting some new and startling ideas about the difference in the feeling toward the negro of the man who once owned him body and soul and of the man who freed him body and soul. And in the next few minutes he studied Crittenden as he had done before--taking in detail the long hair, lean face strongly chiselled, fearless eye, modest demeanour--marking the intellectual look of the face--it was the face of a student--a gentleman--gently born. And, there in the heat of the fight, he fell to marvelling over the nation that had such a man to send into the field as a common soldier. Again they moved forward. Crittenden's Lieutenant dropped--wounded. "Go on," he cried, "damn it, go on!" Grafton helped to carry him back, stepping out into the open for him, and Crittenden saw a bullet lick up the wet earth between the correspondent's feet. Forward again! It was a call for volunteers to advance and cut the wires. Crittenden was the first to spring to his feet, and Abe Long and Reynolds sprang after him. Forward they slipped on their bellies, and the men behind saw one brown, knotty hand after another reach up from the grass and clip, clip, clip through the thickly braided wires. Forward again! The men slipped like eels through and under the wires, and lay in the long grass behind. The time was come. "FORWARD!" Crittenden never knew before the thrill that blast sent through him, and never in his life did he know it again.