Great gaps were made in the line. It came on and passed over the skirmishers. The left of the line passed over us just beyond the spot where Rhodes lay dead. I could see down our line. It was already in tatters. Writers of the South and of the North have all described Pickett's charge as gallant, and have said that his line came on like troops on dress-parade. It was gallant enough--too gallant; but there was no dress-parade. Our officers and men on Seminary Ridge were looking at Pickett's division from its rear; the blue men were looking upon it from its front; from neither position could the alignment be seen; to them it looked straight and fine; but that line passed by me so that I looked along it, and I know that it was swayed and bent long before it fired a shot. As it passed over us, it was scattered--many men thirty, forty, even fifty yards in front of other men. No shame to Pickett's men for this. The charge should not be distinguished for mere gallantry, but for something far superior--endurance. From right and front and left, a semicircle of fire converged upon their ranks and strewed the ground with their dead. For half a mile they advanced under an iron tempest such as Confederate troops never saw elsewhere than at Gettysburg--- a tempest in which no army on earth could live. I was hoping that the line would break and run before it came under the fire of infantry; but it did not break. It was ragged, because the gaps could not be filled as fast as they were made; but the fragments kept on up the hill, uniting as they went. And the line disappears in smoke, which tells us, as well as the sound, that the Federal infantry and ours have at last joined their battle. Here and there we see a real battle-flag violently shaking; the thunder of the cannon no more is heard; the smoke recedes, and our men--those that are left, but not the line--still go forward. Pickett has reached the hostile infantry. On his left and right swarm out against his flanks the army of the enemy, while in his front still stand the stone bulwarks over which but few of his men live to pass. Yet the fight still rages. The Federal skirmishers everywhere have long ago withdrawn, so that we can stand and move and watch the struggle for the graves. In a narrow circle on the hill, where a few trees stand, smoke builds up and eddies. Up there death and fate are working as they never worked. Lines of infantry from either flank move toward the whirlpool. They close upon the smoke. Now we see a few men dropping back out of the smoke and running half-bent down the hill. Their numbers increase. All who have the hardihood to run try to escape, but many remain and become prisoners. A brigade or two of the enemy advance from their works on their right and endeavour to intercept the fugitives. A brigade of Confederates advances on our left, but stops in the wheat. The battle of Gettysburg is over. XXXIV FALLING-WATERS