“Then hurry.  Don’t be worried about us.  I’ll help Hector and Hector will help me.  And do you curve further to the rear, Harry.  The worst thing that a dispatch bearer can do is to get himself shot.”

Waving his hand in farewell Harry galloped away.  He knew that Colonel Talbot had given him sound advice, and he bore back from the front, coming once more into lonely thickets, although the flash of the battle was plainly visible in front of him, and its roar filled his ears.  Yet when he rode alone he almost expected to see Shepard rise up before him, and bid him halt.  His encounters with this man had been under such startling circumstances that it now seemed the rule, and not the exception, for him to appear at any moment.

But Shepard did not come.  Instead Harry began to see the badly wounded of his own side drifting to the rear, helping one another as hurt soldiers learn to do.  Two of them he allowed to hang on his stirrups a little while.

“They’re fighting hard,” said one, a long, gaunt Texan, “an’ they’re so many they might lap roun’ us.  This man of theirs, Grant, ain’t much of a fellow to get scared, but I guess Marse Bob will take care of him just ez he has took care of the others who came into Virginia.”

“They’re led in the main attack by Hancock,” said the other, a Virginian.  “I caught a glimpse of him through the smoke, just as I had a view of him for a minute back there by the clump of trees on the ridge at Gettysburg.”

“Are you one of Pickett’s men?” asked Harry.

“I am, sir, one of the few that’s left.  I went clear to the clump of trees and how I got back I’ve never known.  It was a sort of red dream, in which I couldn’t pick out anything in particular, but I was back with the army, carrying three bullets that the doctors took away from me, and here I’ve gathered up two more they’ll rob me of in just the same way.”

He spoke quite cheerfully, and when Harry, curving again, was compelled to release them, both, although badly wounded, wished him good luck.

He found General Ewell in front, stamping back and forth on his crutches, watching the battle with excitement.

“And so you’re here again, Harry.  Well it’s good news at present!” he cried.  “It seems that their man, Grant, is going to school to Lee just like the others.”

“But some pupils learn too fast, sir!”

“That’s so, but, Harry, I wish I could see more of the field.  An invisible battle like this shakes my nerves.  Batteries that we can’t see send tornadoes of shot and shell among us.  Riflemen, by the thousands, hidden in the thickets rain bullets into our ranks.  It’s inhuman, wicked, and our only salvation lies in the fact that it’s as bad for them as it is for us.  If we can’t see them they can’t see us.”

“You can hold your ground here?”

“Against anything and everything.  Tell General Lee that we intend to eat our suppers on the enemy’s ground.”