But no!  The Stars and Stripes fly forward; they are on the very crest whence the defiant guns spat upon them.  But now the smoke covers everything.  Then there is a calm.  The ground is clear again.  The gray masses are pouring up to the crest in still greater numbers; a large body of them march down the hill in the rear of the Union line concealed by the woods; they march right up to the ranks where the red-barred flag is flying!  What can it mean?  Neither side fires.  There must surely be some mistake.  Hark! now the blue line discovers—­too late—­that the mass is the enemy, and half the line withers in the point-blank discharge.  They are swept from the ground.  Jack is trembling—­demoniac.  The gray mass springs forward; they have seized the guns—­four of them—­and turn them upon the disappearing blue.  Then a hoarse shout of delirious triumph.  The guns are lost; the day is lost, for now there are no blue-coats in sight.  But no!  A still wilder shout—­electrifying, stentorian—­comes across the plateau.  The blue mass reappears; they come with a wild rush in well-ordered array; they are the regulars, Jack can tell by their movements.  It must be the famous Rickett’s battery he saw at Centreville in the morning.  In five minutes the tale was retold, and the guns, snatched from the worsted gray-coats, are safe in the hands of their masters.  Again the smoke obscures the picture; again it clears away, and now the gray are in greater force than before, and the horseless batteries are again the prize of this rapacious grapple.  Swarming in from three sides, the gray again hold the contested pieces.  The blue vanish into the thick bushes.  Another irruption, another pall of smoke, and Jack’s heart bounds in exultant joy, for he sees the New York flag in the van.  Sherman has reached the point of dispute.  But alas! the guns are run back, and as the gray lines sway rearward in billowy, regular measure, they retain the Titanically contested trophies.

The sun is now far beyond the meridian.  The Union lines are closing up compactly.  One more such grapple as the last and the broad plateau where the rebel artillery is massed, pointing westward, northward, eastward, will be won.  But a palsy seems to have settled on the lines of blue.  They are motionless, while their adversaries are hurrying men from some secret place, where they seem to be inexhaustible.  The whole battle is now within the compass of a mile.  But where can these hordes come from?  Surely, General McDowell has never been mad enough to leave them disengaged along the fords!  No; they do not come from that direction.  They come at the very center of the rebel rear.  Can it be that troops are arriving from Richmond?  The Southern lines are longer than the Northern, but they have been since the first moment Jack got a glimpse of them.  He could see, too, that they were thinner:  that on the spur of the plateau in front of the massed rebel artillery a single brigade was holding the Union