Our men far to the right retook the barn. Again the enemy recovered it. Cartridges were running low. Some brave men ran back to the line of battle for more cartridges. The skirmishing was incessant. Our losses were serious. We had fought constantly from sunrise until past midday, and there was no sign of an ending. At one o'clock a shell from our rear flew far above us, and then the devil broke loose. More than a hundred guns joined in, and the air was full of sounds. The Bliss barn was in flames. The Federal batteries answering doubled the din and made the valley and its slopes a hell of hideous noises. All of the enemy's missiles went far over our heads; we were much nearer to the Federal artillery than to our own. Some of our shells, perhaps from defective powder, fell amongst us; some would burst in mid air, and the fragments would hurtle down. The skirmishing ceased--in an ocean one drop more is naught. I walked down the line of Company A. Peacock was lying dead with his hat over his face. The wounded--those disabled--were unrelieved. The men were prostrate in their pits, powder-stained, haggard, battle-worn, and stern. Still shrieked the shells overhead, and yet roared the guns to front and rear--a pandemonium of sight and sound reserved from the foundation of the world for the valley of Gettysburg. The bleeding sun went out in smoke. The smell of burning powder filled the land. Before us and behind us bursting caissons added to the hellish magnificence of this awful picture,--in its background a school of theology, and in its foreground the peaceful city of the dead. For more than an hour the hundreds of hostile guns shook earth and sky; then there was silence and stillness. But the stillness was but brief. Out from our rear and right now marched the Confederate infantry on to destruction. We of the skirmishers felt that our line was doomed. I saw men stand, regardless of exposure, and curse the day. For more than eighteen hours we had been near the Federal lines. We had no hope. We knew that our line, marching out for attack, could not even reach the enemy. Before it could come within charging distance it would be beaten to pieces by artillery. The men looked at the advancing line and said one to another, "Lee has made a mistake." The line came on. It was descending the slope of Seminary Ridge. The Federal batteries began to work upon the line. Into the valley and up the hill it came, with all the cannon in our front and right,--and far to the right,--pumping death into its ranks. I gave it up. I thought of Captain Haskell, and of his words concerning General Lee's inclination to attack. I was no military man; I knew nothing of scientific war, but I was sure that time had knelled the doom of our poor line--condemned to attack behind stone fences the flower of the Army of the Potomac protected by two hundred guns. It was simply insane. It was not war, neither was it magnificent; it was too absurd to be grand.