falling.

This time the boys seemed to be firing effectively. There was a
commotion in the woods beyond, and the sound of groans on the damp air.

"Raise up!" shouted Si. "Forward! Forward! Jump 'em. Jump 'em before
they kin load agin!"

Loading his gun with the practiced ease of a veteran as he rushed
forward, Si led his squad directly against the position of the rebels.
Part of the rebels had promptly run away, as they heard Si order
the charge, but part boldly stood their ground, and were nervously
reloading, or fixing bayonets, as the squad came crashing through the
brush. One of the rebels fired a hasty, ineffectual shot, and by its
light Shorty saw the nervous little Pete, who had torn off his cumbering
haversack, letting his hat go with it, slip between him and Si, and gain
a pace in advance.

"Git back, you little rat," said Shorty, reaching out a long arm,
catching the boy by the collar, and yanking him back. "Git behind me and
stay there."

The flash revealed another rebel fumbling for a cap. Shorty's gun came
down, and the rebel fell, shot through the shoulder. The rebel leader,
a long haired, lathy man, with the quickness of a wildcat, sprang at Si
with his bayonet fixed. Heavy-footed and deliberate as Si usually
was, when the electricity of a fight was in him there was no lack of
celerity. He caught the rebel's bayonet on his musket-barrel and warded
it off so completely that the rebel shot by him in the impetus of his
own rush. As he passed Si delivered a stunning blow on the back of his
head with his gun-barrel.

"That zouave drill was a mighty good thing, after all," thought Si, as
he turned from his prostrate foe to the others.

While this was going on, the boys were imitating Shorty's example,
getting their guns loaded, and banging away as fast as they did so into
the rebels, who went down under the shots, or ran off, leaving one of
their number, a tall, lank mountaineer, who seemed beside himself with
rage. He had grasped his empty gun by the stock, and was swinging it
around his head, yelling fierce insults and defiance to the whole race
o' Yankees.

"Come on, you infernal pack o' white-livered, nigger-stealin',
house-robbin', hell-desarvin' hypocrites," he shouted. "I kin lick the
hull bilin' o' yo'uns. This is my wounded pardner here, and yo'uns can't
have neither me nor him till yo'uns down me, which y' can't do. Come on,
y' pigeon-livered cowards."

The boys who had pressed lip near