outed back. "Fate wouldn't play us
such an awful trick! We can't lose, after having done and suffered so
much!"

Fate would not say which. They could not send men to see, but as they
fought they watched the cloud coming nearer and nearer, and Dick,
whose lips had been moving for some time, realized suddenly that he was
praying. "O God, save us! save us!" he was saying over and over. "Send
the help to us who need it so sorely. Make us strong, O God, to meet our
enemies!"

He and all his comrades wore masks of dust and burned gunpowder, often
stained with scarlet. Their clothing was torn by bullets and reddened
by dripping wounds. When they shouted to one another their voices came
strained and husky from painful throats. Half the time they were blinded
by the smoke and blaze of the firing. The crash did not seem so loud to
them now, because they were partly deafened for the time by a cannonade
of such violence and length.

Dick looked back once more at the great cloud of dust which was now much
nearer, but there was nothing yet to indicate what it bore within, the
bayonets of the North or those of the South. His anxiety became almost
intolerable.

Thomas himself stood at that moment entirely alone in a clump of trees
on the elevation called Horseshoe Ridge, watching the battle, seeing the
enemy in overpowering numbers on both his flanks and even in his
rear. Apparently everything was lost. Taciturn, he never described his
feelings then, but in his soul he must have admired the magnificent
courage with which his troops stood around him, and repelled the
desperate assaults of a foe resolved to win. Although his face
grew grimmer and his teeth set hard, he, too, must have watched the
approaching cloud of dust with the most terrible anxiety. If it bore
enemies in its bosom, then in very truth everything would be lost.

Down a road some miles from the battlefield a force of eight thousand
men had been left as a reserve for one of the armies. They had long
heard the terrific cannonade which was sending shattering echoes through
the mountains, and both their chief and his second in command were eager
to rush to the titanic combat. They could not obtain orders from their
commander, but, at last, they marched swiftly to the field, all the
eight thousand on fire with zeal to do their part.

It was the eight thousand who were making the great cloud of dust,
and, as they came nearer and nearer, the suspense of Thomas' shattere