“This is very annoying, Colonel,” he said.  “I am losing my men without using them.  That last tree fell into my command.”

“Are they firing toward our left?” asked Waldron.  “Not a shot.”

“Very good,” said the chief, with a sigh of contentment.  “If we can only keep them occupied in this direction!  By the way, let your men lie down under the fallen tree, as far as it will go.  It will protect them from others.”

Colburn rode back to his regiment.  Waldron looked impatiently at his watch.  At that moment a fierce burst of line firing arose in front, followed and almost overborne by a long-drawn yell, the scream of charging men.  Waldron put up his watch, glanced excitedly at Fitz Hugh, and smiled.

“I must forgive or forget,” the latter could not help saying to himself.  “All the rest of life is nothing compared with this.”

“Captain,” said Waldron, “ride off to the left at full speed.  As soon as you hear firing at the shoulder of the ridge, return instantly and let me know.”

Fitz Hugh dashed away.  Three minutes carried him into perfect peace, beyond the whistling of ball or the screeching of shell.  On the right was a tranquil, wide waving of foliage, and on the left a serene landscape of cultivated fields, with here and there an embowered farm-house.  Only for the clamor of artillery and musketry far behind him, he could not have believed in the near presence of battle, of blood and suffering and triumphant death.  But suddenly he heard to his right, assaulting and slaughtering the tranquillity of nature, a tumultuous outbreak of file firing, mingled with savage yells.  He wheeled, drove spurs into his horse, and flew back to Waldron.  As he re-entered the wood he met wounded men streaming through it, a few marching alertly upright, many more crouching and groaning, some clinging to their less injured comrades, but all haggard in face and ghastly.

“Are we winning?” he hastily asked of one man who held up a hand with three fingers gone and the bones projecting in sharp spikes through mangled flesh.

“All right, sir; sailing in,” was the answer.

“Is the brigade commander all right?” he inquired of another who was winding a bloody handkerchief around his arm.

“Straight ahead, sir; hurrah for Waldron!” responded the soldier, and almost in the same instant fell lifeless with a fresh ball through his head.

“Hurrah for him!” Fitz Hugh answered frantically, plunging on through the underwood.  He found Waldron with Colburn, the two conversing tranquilly in their saddles amid hissing bullets and dropping branches.

“Move your regiment forward now,” the brigade commander was saying; “but halt it in the edge of the wood.”

“Shan’t I relieve Gildersleeve if he gets beaten?” asked the subordinate officer eagerly.

“No.  The regiments on the left will help him out.  I want your men and Peck’s for the fight on top of the hill.  Of course the rebels will try to retake it; then I shall call for you.”