The mouth of the black woods gaped; there were its black teeth and drifting breath. Fragments of the columns were drawing off to the covert of a bulge of woods on the right. That part of the battle stood still. The sun was half-way up the sky. * * * * * "I fought, cap'n! I wasn't afraid!" He had red, downy cheeks, an indistinct nose, and white eyelashes. "Terrible warrior you are, Jimmie. Your fingers are dripping." Jimmie looked at his hand. A little red brook ran down the palm. He turned white and sick. "Scratched, Jimmie. Tie it up for him." "I never seen it," in an awed voice. The officer went on. "Get your breath. See your guns are all right. What's that?" The man sat staring at his wrecked and twisted rifle. Another man laughed hoarsely. "Scrap-iron he picked up." "'Tain't, either"--angrily. "It's my rifle. Been holding it all day. What's gone with it? Something hit it." It had been shattered in his hands by a flying missile. Some one rode up whom the captain saluted. "How many left here?" "About forty." "Colonel Morley?" "In the cornfield." "Major Cutting?" "All right, sir, over there." "How are your men?" "Pretty fair, sir. They'll go in again." A mile down the valley the fight was growing hotter; a ravine was full of smoke, a jam around a bridge, a line of blue hills beyond; up nearer, columns were massing by a sunken road, under batteries playing from opposite hills across the creek; a village lay to the west. The sun made another jump up the sky. The fields around were empty, except for the lines in covert behind the fences, and here and there a horseman galloping, here and there a horse but no horseman. The enemy were in the corn again, shooting intermittently. Smoke drifted up and turned white against the glistening blue. The batteries beyond the woods on the right broke out again. New clouds of smoke floated overhead and dimmed the sun. In the grass-fields still the crouched lines waited in covert of weeds and fences. Hours that had shot past in the charge, the struggle and retreat, now stretched like sleepless nights. Company B muttered and swore. "What's the use of waiting?" "Le's go in!" The captain and lieutenant lay at a distance on the grass. Neither of them answered. Jimmie felt around his belt. "I got fifteen cartridges." "How's your scratch, Jimmie?" "Ho, I don' care for that. Why don' we fight some more?" The captain said, "Do you hear those minie-balls?" The lieutenant, "What of them?" "The pitch, of course; they go from E flat to F, and then drop to D. That's a very pretty interval." "You've got an ear! They do sort of go up and down." "Le's fight some more." "Oh, Jimmie, dry up!" High noon over the corn, and the woods, and the white building with the squat chimney. Jimmie again. "Le's fight so--Oh!"