me, and they all
missed like a lot of boys at their first deer stalking!"

"They will have another chance, and that speedily," I ventured; and,
truly, the chance did not tarry.

From our view point on the rising ground we could see the enemy forming
under cover of the wood; and as we looked, the two pieces of cannon
were thrust to the front to bellow out the signal for the assault.

'Twas a sight to stir the blood when the enemy broke cover into the
opener wooding of the field to the tune of the roaring cannon, the
volleyings of small arms and the defiant huzzaings of the men. The sun
was just peering over the summit of Thicketty Mountain, and his level
rays fell first upon the charging line sweeping in like a tidal wave of
red death to crumple our skirmishers before it.

"Lord!" says Richard; "if Yeates and the Indian come alive out of
that--"

But the outliers closed upon our first line in decent good order, firing
as they could; and in less time than it takes to write it down the
onsweeping wave of red was upon the Carolinians. We looked to see the
militia fire and run, home-guard fashion; but these men of Pickens's
were made of more soldierly stuff. They took the fire of the assaulting
line like veterans, giving ground only when it came to the bayonet push.

"That fetches it to us," said Richard, most coolly; drawing his claymore
when the Carolinians began to come home like spindrift ahead of the wave
of red. Then he had a steadying word for the men of his company, and a
hearty shout and a curse for some of the Georgians who had cut around
the flanks of our main to come at their horses in the rear.

But the lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half
prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood
firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it.
But the British were better bayoneted than we, and when it came to the
iron our lads must needs give ground sullenly, fighting their way
backward as a stubborn assault fights its way inch by inch forward.

"Here come their reserves," said Dick, pointing with his blade to a
second red line forming in the farther vistas of the wood. "Lord! shall
we never get into it?"

'Twas just here that an order sent by Colonel Howard to his first
company, directing it to charge by the flank, came near costing us a
rout. The order was misunderstood,--'twas received at the precise moment
of the upcoming of the British reserves,