They are half across the field at the moment. The air is ringing with the blare of battery bugles and the sputter of file-firing. Smoke is drifting across the eager column of New-Englanders, and there are queer whistlings on the wind as Snipe, digging spurs into his tired horse's ribs, whirls about and goes darting back to the Sudley road. But there he has to draw rein. The narrow track is blocked. With set faces, but flashing eyes, a battalion of regulars is hastening forward. Then, with cracking whips and straining traces, strong, mettlesome horses prancing in the fulness of their strength and spirit, Griffin's West Point battery comes tearing through the lane. Wagons, either of ammunition or rations, or even ambulances, are cut off somewhere far to the rear. Able only to move at the trot, halted every now and then, and forced aside, sometimes even compelled by over-zealous officers to halt and explain why he is going to the rear, Snipe is full half an hour passing the batteries and battalions of Heintzelman's division pressing forward into action. Well-nigh another half-hour is he in finding the needed wagon and compelling its reluctant negro drivers to whip their startled mules out into the track. It is after one o'clock when at last he comes spurring out upon the open field again, and now, what a change in the picture! General Hunter has been borne to the rear, wounded, but the thin line of the rebels has fallen back to the plateau beyond the Robinson place, the splendid regular batteries are far over on an open field near the Dogan house, to the north of the turnpike, hurling shell upon the retiring rebel lines. Some of Burnside's command, still halted, are apparently repairing damages, but one regiment has gone on, and with tumultuous cheers the Union men are pressing up the slopes at both the Robinson and Henry houses, the New-Englanders somewhere with them. The road is blocked in front, the fields are strewn here and there with little groups hanging about prostrate soldiers, killed or wounded, and Snipe nibbles at a hardtack to still that queer feeling of faintness that again assails him when he recognizes among the pallid wounded a lieutenant of his own company. Before he can find words to speak he hears the voice of the adjutant, and that young officer has a handkerchief bound about his head and blood is trickling down his neck. "Ride forward," he says. "The regiment is straight ahead over that first ridge, and the major needs his horse. Yonder lies the other. I'll bring up the wagon."