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.

A singular feeling took hold of him, one of which he was not then
conscious. He knew six of the officers who sat in the front of the
Invincibles, and one of them was his own cousin, almost his brother.
He did not know a soul in the blue columns advancing upon them, and his
hopes and fears centered suddenly around that little group of six.

The wood was filled with Southern infantry, as it was now spouting flame,
and the battery continued to thunder as fast as the men could reload and
fire. The Invincibles who carried short rifles, much like the carbines
of the North, raised them and pulled the triggers. Many in the blue
column fell, but the others went on without faltering.

Dick knew from long experience what would follow, and he watched it alike
with the eye and the mind that divines. Either his eye or his fancy saw
the Invincibles lean forward a little, fasten their rifles, shake loose
the reins with one hand, and drop the other hand to the hilt of the
saber. It was certain that in the next minute they would charge.

He saw a trumpeter raise a trumpet to his lips and blow, loud and shrill.
Then the co