the Taneytown road to find that his artillery had suffered.  A score of harnessed horses lay dead or horribly mangled.  His quick orders sent up to the front a dozen guns.  Some were horsed, some were pulled with ropes by the cheering, eager cannoneers.  Their way was up the deserted slope, “well cleared by the enemy,” thought Penhallow with a smile.  Once he looked back and saw the far flight of a shell end in or near an ambulance of the wounded beyond the Taneytown road.

During his absence gun after gun had been disabled and a caisson exploded; the gun crews lay dead or wounded.  What more horribly disturbed Penhallow was the hideous screams of the battery horses.  “Ah! the pity of it.  They had no cause to die for—­no duty—­no choice.”  As he assisted in replacing the wreckage of the guns, he still heard the cries of the animals who so dumb in peace found in torture voices of anguish unheard before—­unnatural, strange.  The appalling tempest of shells screamed on and on, while the most of them fell beyond the Crest.  Penhallow looked up to note their flight.  They darted overhead shrill-voiced or hissing.  There was a white puff of smoke, a red flash, and an explosion.

General Gibbon, coming back from the long line of his corps, said, “My men have suffered very little, but the headquarters behind them are in ruin.  Meade has moved back.”  As he spoke the shells began to fall on the Crest.

“They seem to be more attentive to us,” said the battery Captain Woodruff.  “Thought we’d catch it!”

“Horrible!—­Those horses, Gibbon,” said Penhallow.

At last there seemed to be more concentrated firing on the Crest.  Many shells fell near the imperfect wall-shelter of the crouching men, while others exploded among the lines to left or right in the bushes.

“They are doing better now, confound them!” said the young general coolly.  “Our men at the wall seem disturbed.

“Come with me,” he said to Penhallow and Haskell of the Staff, who had just joined them.

They went down in front of the guns to where behind the low wall lay the two thin lines of the Pennsylvania regiments.  He spoke to the Colonel of the 71st, who with other officers was afoot encouraging the men.

“Keep cool, boys,” said Gibbon.

The men laughed.  “Oh, we’re all right, General, but we ain’t cool.”

Gibbon laughed.  “Let us go over the wall and try to see a little better,” said Penhallow.

A hundred yards beyond the lines they sat down.  The ceaseless rain of shot and shell from both sides went over them, the canopy of smoke being so high above that the interspace between the lines was now more or less visible.  Far beyond them our skirmish outposts were still motionless on guard; and yet further farms and houses, some smoking in ruin, lay among the green fields along the Emmitsburg Pike.

“It is pretty safe here,” said the Corps Commander, while far above them the shells sang their war notes.