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brigades grew more terrible. Dick, reckless of shell and bullets, tried
to pierce the cloud with his eyes. He caught a glimpse of a flag and
uttered a wild shout of joy. It was the stars and stripes. The eight
thousand were eight thousand of the North! He danced up and down on the
stump, and shouted at the top of his voice:

"They're our own men! Help is here! Help is here!"

A vast shout of relief rose from Thomas' army as the eight thousand
still coming swiftly joined them. Granger was their leader, but
Steedman, his lieutenant, galloped at once to Thomas, who still stood in
the clump of trees, and asked him what he wanted him to do. The general,
calm and taciturn as ever, pointed toward a long hill that flamed with
the enemy's guns, and said three words:

"Take that ridge!"

Steedman galloped back and the eight thousand charged at once. The
battle in front sank a little, as if the others wished to watch the new
combat. Dick had been dragged down from the stump by Warner, but the two
stood erect with Pennington, their eyes turned toward the ridge. Colonel
Winchester was near them, his attention fixed upon the same place.

The eight thousand firing their rifles and supported by artillery
charged at a great pace. The whole ridge blazed with fire, and the
dead and wounded went down in sheaves. But Dick could not see that they
faltered. Hoarse shouts came again from his dry and blackened lips:

"They will take it! they will take it! Look how they face the guns!" he
was crying.

"So they will!" said Warner. "See what a splendid charge! Now they're
hidden! What a column of smoke! It floats aside, and, look, our men are
still going on! Nothing can stop them! They must have lost thousands,
but they reach the slope, and as sure as there's a sun in the heavens
they're going up it!"

That tremendous cheer burst again from the beleaguered Union army.
Granger and Steedman, with their fresh troops, were rushing up the
slopes of the formidable ridge, and though three thousand of the eight
thousand fell, they took it, hurling back the advancing columns of the
South, and securing the rear of Thomas.

Then the Winchester men and others about them went wild with joy. They
leaped, they danced, they sang, until they were commanded to make ready
for a new attack. Rosecrans in Chattanooga, with the most of his army
there also in wild confusion, had sent word to Thomas to retire, to
which Thomas had replied tersely: "It will rui