The little colonel’s sword gleamed in the air, as he gave the order to march on the double-quick to the position assigned to him.

“Now, Tom, steady, and think of nothing but God and your country,” said old Hapgood, as the regiment commenced its rapid march.  “I know something about this business, and I can tell you we shall have hot work before we get through with it.”

“Where are the rebels?  I don’t see any,” asked Tom, who found that his ideas of the manner in which a battle is fought were very much at fault.

“You will see them very soon.  They are in their breastworks.  There!  Look down there!” exclaimed the veteran as the regiment reached a spot which commanded a full view of the battle.

Tom looked upon the fearful scene.  The roar of the artillery and the crash of the small arms were absolutely stunning.  He saw men fall, and lie motionless on the ground, where they were trampled upon by the horses, and crushed beneath the wheels of cannon and caisson.  But the cry was, that the army of the Union had won the field, and it inspired him with new zeal and new courage.

Scarcely had the remnant of the brigade reached the right of the battery, before they were ordered to charge down the valley, by Colonel Franklin, the acting brigadier.  They were executing the command with a dash and vigor that would have been creditable to veterans, when they were ordered to cross the ravine, and support the Eire Zouaves.  The movement was made, and Tom soon found himself in the thickest of the fight.  Shot and shell were flying in every direction, and the bullets hissed like hailstones around him.

In spite of all his preparations for this awful scene, his heart rose up into his throat.  His eyes were blinded by the volumes of rolling smoke, and his mind confused by the rapid succession of incidents that were transpiring around him.  The pictures he had painted were sunlight and golden compared with the dread reality.  Dead and dying men strewed the ground in every direction.  Wounded horses were careering on a mad course of destruction, trampling the wounded and the dead beneath their feet.  The hoarse shouts of the officers were heard above the roar of battle.  The scene mocked all the attempts which the soldier boy had made to imagine its horrors.

In front of the regiment were the famous Eire Zouaves, no longer guided and controlled by the master genius of Ellsworth.  They fought like tigers, furiously, madly; but all discipline had ceased among them, and they rushed wildly to the right and the left, totally heedless of their officers.  They fought like demons, and as Tom saw them shoot down, hew down, or bayonet the hapless rebels who came within their reach, it seemed to him as though they had lost their humanity, and been transformed into fiends.

As soon as the regiment reached its position, the order was given to fire.  Tom found this a happy relief; and when he had discharged his musket a few times, all thoughts of the horrors of the scene forsook him.  He no longer saw the dead and the dying; he no longer heard the appalling roar of battle.  He had become a part of the scene, instead of an idle spectator.  He was sending the bolt of death into the midst of the enemies of his country.