that lay between the two sides they
threw themselves down in the thick, tall grass. Neither Dick nor Warner
could see them now. They beheld only the stems of the grass waving as if
under a gentle wind. But Dick knew that the rippling movement marked the
passage of the riflemen.

Meanwhile the attack in their front was growing hotter. At least six
or seven hundred sharpshooters were sending a fire which would have
annihilated them if it had not been for the trees. As it was, fragments
of bark, twigs, and leaves showered about them. The whistling of the
bullets and their chugging as they struck the trees made a continuous
sinister note.

The Union men were not silent under this fire. Their own rifles were
replying fast, but Colonel Winchester continually urged them to take
aim, and, while death and wounds were inflicted on the Union ranks, the
Southern were suffering in the same manner.

Dick turned his eyes toward the right flank, where the fifty picked
riflemen, Sergeant Whitley at their head, were crawling through the
tall grass. He knew that they were making toward a little corner of the
forest, thrust farther forward than the rest, and presently when the
rippling in the grass ceased he was sure that they had reached it. Then
the fifty rifles cracked together and the Southern flank was swept by
fifty well-aimed bullets. Lying in their covert, Whitley's men reloaded
their breech-loading rifles and again sent in a deadly fire.

The main Northern force redoubled its efforts at the same time. The men
in blue sent in swarms of whistling bullets and Dick saw the front line
of the South retreating.

"We're rousing the wolves from their lairs," explained Pennington
exultantly as he sprang from his tree, just in time for a bullet to send
his hat flying from his head. Fortunately, it clipped only a lock of
hair, but he received in a good spirit Warner's admonishing words:

"Don't go wild, Frank. We've merely repelled the present attack. You
don't think that Forrest with superior forces is going to let us alone,
do you?"

"No, I don't," replied Pennington, "and don't you get behind that tree.
It's mine, and I'm coming back to it. I've earned it. I held it against
all kinds of bullets. Look at the scars made on each side of it by rebel
lead."

The firing now died. Whitley's flank movement had proved wholly
successful, and Colonel Winchester reinforced him in the little forest
peninsula with fifty more picked men, where