Not a word is spoken; the populous depths of the forest still murmur with their unseen and unseeing swarm, but all along the fringe is silence.  The burly commander is an equestrian statue of himself.  The mounted staff officers, their field glasses up, are motionless all.  The line of battle in the edge of the wood stands at a new kind of “attention,” each man in the attitude in which he was caught by the consciousness of what is going on.  All these hardened and impenitent man-killers, to whom death in its awfulest forms is a fact familiar to their every-day observation; who sleep on hills trembling with the thunder of great guns, dine in the midst of streaming missiles, and play at cards among the dead faces of their dearest friends—­all are watching with suspended breath and beating hearts the outcome of an act involving the life of one man.  Such is the magnetism of courage and devotion.

If now you should turn your head you would see a simultaneous movement among the spectators—­a start, as if they had received an electric shock—­and looking forward again to the now distant horseman you would see that he has in that instant altered his direction and is riding at an angle to his former course.  The spectators suppose the sudden deflection to be caused by a shot, perhaps a wound; but take this field-glass and you will observe that he is riding toward a break in the wall and hedge.  He means, if not killed, to ride through and overlook the country beyond.

You are not to forget the nature of this man’s act; it is not permitted to you to think of it as an instance of bravado, nor, on the other hand, a needless sacrifice of self.  If the enemy has not retreated he is in force on that ridge.  The investigator will encounter nothing less than a line-of-battle; there is no need of pickets, videttes, skirmishers, to give warning of our approach; our attacking lines will be visible, conspicuous, exposed to an artillery fire that will shave the ground the moment they break from cover, and for half the distance to a sheet of rifle bullets in which nothing can live.  In short, if the enemy is there, it would be madness to attack him in front; he must be manoeuvred out by the immemorial plan of threatening his line of communication, as necessary to his existence as to the diver at the bottom of the sea his air tube.  But how ascertain if the enemy is there?  There is but one way,—­somebody must go and see.  The natural and customary thing to do is to send forward a line of skirmishers.  But in this case they will answer in the affirmative with all their lives; the enemy, crouching in double ranks behind the stone wall and in cover of the hedge, will wait until it is possible to count each assailant’s teeth.  At the first volley a half of the questioning line will fall, the other half before it can accomplish the predestined retreat.  What a price to pay for gratified curiosity!  At what a dear rate an army must sometimes purchase knowledge!  “Let me pay all,” says this gallant man—­this military Christ!