The drums grew clearer, the arpeggio notes of the fifes warbled shriller. Doctor Brent, standing in the center of the redoubt, had no vision of what happened outside the walls. But he could feel the tightening of nerves, hear the hush of men’s voices and note the hunching of shoulders as they took aim. The cannon shot stopped, and in the brief intermission there arrived the voices of the British officers encouraging their men, rallying them to the glory of the regimentals. Off to the left at the angle of the rail fence the fury burst in full force. Then Brent seemed to feel a blast at his heart, and his ears rang with the roaring of the guns as the defenders of the redoubt took up the challenge. Men began to shout. The dust rose thickly and the thud of British balls pattered against the earthen wall. The exposed marksman fired methodically, handed his gun down and was given another. Out of the smoke and the inferno of musketry Brent’s waiting ear caught an only too significant sound--a drawn, half-suppressed cry of pain. Turning, he saw a stout fellow reel back and catch his side in amazement. There was a grotesque wrinkling of his tanned face and a widening of honest eyes. “They took me!” he gasped. “They took me!” He dropped his gun and staggered. Brent sprang forward and received the falling body in his arms. The smell of powder rolled back and stifled the doctor. As he put the dying man on the ground and endeavored to check the fast spurting blood, he heard the groaning of many voices beyond the parapet. He shook his head sorrowfully. Many a brave soul out on that bullet-ploughed field would shortly be pleading for mercy and for water; neither of which, in the high tide of conflict, could be given them. The man on the ground collected himself and shivered as if from cold. Doctor Brent ceased his efforts and, out of long habit, folded the lifeless hands. “Soon enough,” he soliloquized, “there’ll not be time for even this. A hot and furious day.” It was hot enough. The rifle firing diminished; the loud commands of the British officers died away. Around the parapet rose a parched and jubilant cry. Presently the provincials had relaxed and turned their sweating faces inward to open their cartridge boxes, ram home the charge and prime the pan. They were grimed of cheek, heavy-eyed and tortured by thirst. Not a man had slept in thirty hours and, during all the day previous to the infantry attack, a heavy shower of round shot from the British men-o’-war had played upon their position.