Jackson, standing at the edge of a wood, saw the magnificent advance, and while the officers around him despaired, he did not think of awaiting the Northern attack, but prepared instead for an attack of his own. There was word that McLaws and the Harper's Ferry men had come. Jackson galloped to meet them, formed them quickly with his own, and then the Southern drums rolled out the charge. The weary veterans, gathering themselves anew for another burst of strength, fell with all their might on the Northern flank. Dick felt the force of that charge. Men seemed to be driven in upon him. He was hurled down, how he knew not, but he sprang up again, and then he saw that their advance was stopped. Long lines of bayonets advanced upon them, and a terrible artillery fire crashed through and through their ranks. Two or three thousand men in blue fell in a moment or so. Fortune in an instant had made a terrible change of front. Dick shouted aloud in despair as the brigades steadily gave back. The great Union batteries were firing over their heads again, but even they could not arrest the Southern advance. Their regiments were coming now across the shorn cornfield. Dick saw the galloping horses drawing their batteries up closer and around the flanks. And the rebel yell of victory which he had heard too often was now swelling from thousands of throats, as the fierce sons of the South rushed upon their foe. But the North refused to abandon the battle here. These were splendid troops, so tenacious and so much bent upon victory that they scarcely needed leaders. Sedgwick, another of their gallant generals, fell and was carried off the field, wounded severely. Richardson, yet another, was killed a little later, but heavy reinforcements arrived, and the Southerners were driven back in their turn. These were picked troops who met here, veterans almost all of them, and neither would yield. The superior weight and range of the Northern guns gave them an advantage in artillery, and it was used to the utmost. Dick did not see how men could live under such a horrible fire, but there were the gray lines replying, and wherever they yielded, yielding but little. Noon came and then one o'clock. They had been fighting since dawn, and a combat so impetuous and terrible could not be maintained forever, particularly when the awful demon of war was eating up men so fast. Many of the regiments on either side had lost more than half their number and would lose more. They were human beings, and even the unwounded began to collapse from mere physical exhaustion. Some dropped to the ground from sheer inability to stand, and as they lay there, they heard to the south and west the rolling thunder that told of Burnside's belated advance upon the Antietam.