“Now, lads,” said Colonel Winchester, going down the ranks, “ready with your rifles!”

The Southern infantry came on to the steady beating of a drum somewhere, but as they drew near the fort a sheet of bullets poured upon them, and drove them back, leaving the ground sprinkled with the fallen.  Again and again they reformed and returned to the charge always to meet the same fate.

“Brave fellows!” exclaimed Warner, “but they can’t retake this fort from us!”

After the last repulse Colonel Winchester drew out his men, mounted them, and charging the infantry in flank sent them far down the road toward Winchester, where heavy columns came to their support.  But the Winchester men had time to breathe, and also to exult, as they had suffered but little loss.  While they remained at the captured fort, awaiting further orders, they watched the battle elsewhere, flaring in a long irregular line across the valley.

The rifle fire was heavy and the big guns of Early were sweeping the roads with shell and grapeshot.  As well as Dick could see through his glasses, the only success yet achieved was that of the cavalry at the fort.  Sheridan himself had not yet appeared, and the hopes of the three sank a little.  They had seen so many triumphs nearly achieved and then lost that they could believe in nothing until it was done.

But the morning was yet very young.  While the east had long been full of light, the golden glow was just enveloping the west.  The rifles crashed incessantly and the heavy thunder of the cannon gave the steady sound a deeper note.  The fire of the defending Southern force made a red stream across the hills and fields.

“It’s too early to have a battle,” said Warner, looking at the sun, which was not yet far above the horizon.

“Too early for us or too early for the Johnnies?” said Pennington.  “I think, Dick, I see those rebel friends of yours.  Turn your glasses to the right, and look at that regiment of horses by the edge of the grove.  I see at the head of it two men with longish hair.  Apparently they are elderly, and they must be Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant Colonel St. Hilaire.”

Dick turned his glasses eagerly and the officers of the Invincibles were at once recognizable to his more familiar eye.  He could not mistake Colonel Leonidas Talbot and Lieutenant Colonel Hector St. Hilaire, both of whom were watching the progress of the battle through glasses, and he knew that the four young men who sat their horses just behind them were Harry, St. Clair, Dalton and Langdon.

As no further attack was made on the fort, and Colonel Winchester’s troop remained stationary for the time, Dick kept his glasses bearing continually upon the Invincibles.  The glasses were powerful and they told him much.  He inferred from the manner in which the men were drawn up that they would charge soon.  Near them a battery of four Confederate guns was planted on a hill, and it was firing rapidly and effectively, sending shell and shrapnel into advancing lines of blue infantry.