Meanwhile, we were not idle spectators of all this. At the moment when Baird's men had been forced into the open field, and it seemed impossible to re-form them under the fire they were receiving, the skirmishers in front of Johnson's and Palmer's divisions broke out into a lively fire and came in at a run. Close behind them were the rapidly-advancing skirmishers of the enemy. As these came in sight of our position they took shelter behind trees and waited for their main force to come up. Soon the woods behind them were filled with the long, sweeping lines of Bragg's infantry, moving swiftly and steadily up to the attack. They reached their skirmishers, and as the latter fell in with the main body the whole broke into the peculiar shrill and fitful yell of the Southern soldiery, and rushed impetuously upon our line. From behind its barricade Hazen's brigade gave the yelling assailants two volleys, by front and rear rank, and then, as the enemy staggered under the regular blows, the command "Load and fire at will!" rang along the line. Out burst a swift storm of lead, before which the wasting ranks of the assailants first wavered, and then stopped to open a rapid but wild and diminishing fire against the barricade. For a moment or two their colors waved defiantly at their front as their officers rode among them in the vain endeavor to hold them to the hopeless effort; and then they turned and vanished into the deep recesses of the forest whence they came. Not as they came, however, but as a flying multitude of panic-stricken men, insensible to authority, conscious only of their defeat and their peril. Ah! but this was quite different from yesterday's work, thought the men of Hazen's brigade. It is one thing to march up to an enemy waiting to receive you on his chosen ground, and another to lie quietly in position and let your enemy feel his way up until he is within fair range. This was the thought after the successful defence: before the fight it is a question whether it does not require greater steadiness of nerve to wait inactive for an attack than to rush forward in an onslaught. Officers and men in Palmer's division were in excellent spirits. They saw that their comrades on the right and the left had met with equally good fortune. Johnson's division on one side and Reynolds's on the other remained as steady as rocks.