Now there began to appear in the woods before the trenches the figures of men, at first scattered, then becoming steadily more numerous.  There came men bearing other men whose arms lopped loosely.  Some men walked with a hand gripped tightly to an arm; others hobbled painfully.  Two men sometimes supported a third, whose head, heavy and a-droop, would now and then be kept erect with difficulty, the eyes staring with a ghastly, sheepish gaze, the face set in a look of horrified surprise.  This awful rabble, the parings of the defeated line in front, dropped back through the woods, dropped back upon the young reserves, who lay there in the line.  Some of them could go no farther, but fell there and lay silent.  Others passed back into the fields where droned the protesting bees, or where here and there a wide tree offered shelter.  Suddenly all the summer air was filled with anguish and horror.  Was this, then, the War?

And now there appeared yet other figures among the trees, a straggling, broken line, which fell back, halted, stood and fired always calmly, coolly, at some unseen thing in front of them.  But this line resolved itself into individuals, who came back to the edge of the wood, methodically picking their way through the abattis, climbing the intervening fences, and finally clambering into the earthworks to take their places for the final stand.  They spoke with grinning respect of that which was out there ahead, coming on.  They threw off their coats and tightened their belts, making themselves comfortable for what time there yet remained.  One man saw a soldier sitting under a tree, leaning against the trunk, his knees high in front of him, his pipe between his lips.  Getting no answer to his request for the loan of the pipe, he snatched it without leave, and then, discovering the truth, went on none the less to enjoy the luxury of a smoke, it seeming to him desirable to compass this while it yet remained among the possibilities of life.

At last there came a continued, hoarse, deep cheering, a roaring wave of menace made up of little sounds.  An officer sprang up to the top of the breastworks and waved his sword, shouting out something which no one heard or cared to hear.  The line in the trenches, boys and veterans, reserves and remnants of the columns of defence, rose and poured volley after volley, as they could, into the thick and concealing woods that lay before them.  None the less, there appeared soon a long, dusty, faded line, trotting, running, walking, falling, stumbling, but coming on.  It swept like a long serpent parallel to the works, writhing, smitten but surviving.  It came on through the wood, writhing, tearing at the cruel abattis laid to entrap it.  It writhed, roared, but it broke through.  It swept over the rail fences that lay between the lines and the abattis, and still came on!  This was not war, but Fate!

There came a cloud of smoke, hiding the face of the intrenchments.  Then the boys of Louisburg saw bursting through this suffocating curtain a few faces, many faces, long rows of faces, some pale, some red, some laughing, some horrified, some shouting, some swearing—­a long row of faces that swept through the smoke, following a line of steel—­a line of steel that flickered, waved, and dipped.