had formed on the hand in which he held his
musket. His clothes were frozen stiff on his body.

He leaped to his feet and beat his arms fiercely, and glanced over the
embankment toward those ominous-looking piles of blue. The sleet was
sheathing their bodies in crystal shrouds now. No flag of truce was
allowed and the wounded lay freezing and dying where they fell. He could
hear the stronger ones still crying for help. Their long piteous moans
rang above the howl of the wind through the breaking boughs of the
trees.

It was hideous. Why didn't they rescue those men? Why didn't they
proclaim a truce to bury the dead and save the wounded? Grant must be a
fiend! Far off on the river another black smudge was seen in the sky.
More reenforcements were coming.

The three Confederate generals suddenly waked with a shock to realize
that their foe had landed a second army, cutting their communications
with Nashville.

A council of war was hastily called on the night of the fourteenth. It
was a discordant aggregation. Floyd, the former Secretary of War in
Buchanan's administration, was the senior officer in command. He was
regarded more as a politician than a soldier and his exploits in West
Virginia had not added to his fame. The men around him had little
respect for his capacity as a commander. Besides quarreling had become
the fashion in the armies of the victorious South since the affair at
Bull Run. The example of Joseph E. Johnston and Beauregard was
contagious.

There was but one thing to do. The wrangling generals were unanimous on
that point. They must make a desperate assault next morning on Grant's
right wing and reestablish their communications with Nashville at all
hazards.

Under cover of the darkness on the morning of the fifteenth, the men
were marched from their trenches and massed on the Federal right. But a
handful were left to guard the entrenchments on the Confederate right.

At the first streak of dawn, the concentrated lines of the Confederates
were hurled on the division of McClernand. Before two o'clock Grant's
right wing had been crushed into a shapeless mass with the loss of his
artillery. The way was open to Nashville and the discordant commanding
generals of the Confederacy paused.

Buckner ordered up his artillery and reserves to pursue the enemy or
hold his newly-won position. Pillow flatly refused to allow a single gun
to be withdrawn from the entrenchments and sent peremptory orders to hi