ed!" exclaimed the young Adjutant in tones of
Anguish.

"No, no," said Captain Bennett, with cheerful confidence. "These are
only the camp riff-raff, who run whenever so much as a cap is burst near
them."

So it proved to be. There were teamsters upon their wheel-mules, cooks,
officers' servants, both black and white, and civilian employees,
mingled with many men in uniform, skulking from their companies. Those
were mounted who could seize a mule anywhere, and those who could not
were endeavoring to keep up on foot with the panic-stricken riders.

All seemed wild with one idea: To get as far as possible from the
terrors raging around the mountain top. They rushed through the regiment
and disordered its ranks.

"Who are you a-shovin', young fellow--say?" demanded Abe Bolton, roughly
collaring a strapping hulk of a youth, who, hatless, and with his fat
cheeks white with fear came plunging against him like a frightened
steer.

"O boys, let me pass, and don't go up there! Don't! You'll all be
killed. I know it, I'm all the one of my company that got away--I am,
really. All the rest are killed."

"Heavens! what a wretched remnant, as the dry-goods man said, when the
clerk brought him a piece of selvage as all that the burglars had left
of his stock of broadcloth," said Kent Edwards. "It's too bad that you
were allowed to get away, either. You're not a proper selection for a
relic at all, and you give a bad impression of your company. You ought
to have thought of this, and staid up there and got killed, and let some
better-looking man got away, that would have done the company credit.
Why didn't you think of this?"

"Git!" said Abe, sententiously, with a twist in the coward's collar,
that, with the help of an opportune kick by Kent, sent him sprawling
down the bank.

"Captain Bennett," shouted the Colonel angrily, "Fix bayonets there in
front, and drive these hounds off, or we'll never get there."

A show of savage-looking steel sent the skulkers down a side-path
through the woods.

The tumult of the battle heightened with every step the regiment
advanced. A turn in the winding road brought them to an opening in the
woods which extended clear to the summit. Through this the torrent of
noise poured as when a powerful band passes the head of a street. Down
this avenue came rolling the crash of thousands of muskets fired with
the intense energy of men in mortal combat, the deeper pulsations of the
artillery, and ev