The staff bent over the map, Lanstron's finger flying from point to point, while ready expert answers to his questions were at his elbow and the wires sang out directions that made a drenched and shivering soldiery Who had been yielding and holding and never advancing grow warm with the thought of springing from the mire of trenches to charge the enemy. And one, Gustave Feller, in command of a brigade of field-guns--the mobile guns that could go forward rumbling to the horses' trot--saw his dearly beloved batteries swing into a road in the moonlight. "La, la, la! The worm will turn!" he clucked. "It's a merry, gambling old world and I'm right fond of it--so full of the unexpected for the Grays! That lead horse is a little lame, but he'll last the night through. Lots of lame things will! Who knows? Maybe we'll be cleaning the mud off our boots on the white posts of the frontier to-morrow! A whole brigade mine! I live! You old brick, Lanny! This time we are going to spank the enemy on the part of his anatomy where spanks are conventionally given. La, la, la!" * * * * * If not his own pain, the moans, the gasps, the appeals for water, the convulsive shivers from cold, and the demoniacal giggles from a soldier gone insane in medley around him would have kept the judge's son awake. After he had fallen, struck by he knew not what, and consciousness had returned, came the surging charge of the Browns in the counter-attack, with throaty cries and threshing tread. He was able to turn over on his face and cover the back of his head with his hands, as a slight protection from steps that found footing on his body instead of on the earth. After that he had understood vaguely that a newcomer on the field of the fallen needed help with a first aid, and he had found his knife and slit a sleeve and applied a bandage to check the bleeding of an artery. Before dawn broke the sky was all alight again with a far-reaching gun-fire--that of the Brown advance--throwing the scene of slaughter into spectral relief, which became more real and terrible in the undramatic light of day.