ns, like a
monstrous bolt of lightning. The men of the battery wore white duck
trousers, which somehow emphasized their legs; and when they ran and
crowded in little groups at the bidding of the shouting officers, it was
more impressive than usual to the infantry.

Fred Collins, of A Company, was saying: "Thunder! I wisht I had a drink.
Ain't there any water round here?" Then somebody yelled, "There goes th'
bugler!"

As the eyes of half the regiment swept in one machinelike movement there
was an instant's picture of a horse in a great convulsive leap of a
death wound and a rider leaning back with a crooked arm and spread
fingers before his face. On the ground was the crimson terror of an
exploding shell, with fibres of flame that seemed like lances. A
glittering bugle swung clear of the rider's back as fell headlong the
horse and the man. In the air was an odour as from a conflagration.

Sometimes they of the infantry looked down at a fair little meadow which
spread at their feet. Its long, green grass was rippling gently in a
breeze. Beyond it was the gray form of a house half torn to pieces by
shells and by the busy axes of soldiers who had pursued firewood. The
line of an old fence was now dimly marked by long weeds and by an
occasional post. A shell had blown the well-house to fragments. Little
lines of gray smoke ribboning upward from some embers indicated the
place where had stood the barn.

From beyond a curtain of green woods there came the sound of some
stupendous scuffle, as if two animals of the size of islands were
fighting. At a distance there were occasional appearances of
swift-moving men, horses, batteries, flags, and, with the crashing of
infantry volleys were heard, often, wild and frenzied cheers. In the
midst of it all Smith and Ferguson, two privates of A Company, were
engaged in a heated discussion, which involved the greatest questions of
the national existence.

The battery on the hill presently engaged in a frightful duel. The white
legs of the gunners scampered this way and that way, and the officers
redoubled their shouts. The guns, with their demeanours of stolidity and
courage, were typical of something infinitely self-possessed in this
clamour of death that swirled around the hill.

One of a "swing" team was suddenly smitten quivering to the ground, and
his maddened brethren dragged his torn body in their struggle to escape
from this turmoil and danger. A young soldier astride one o