ike. There, as when a turbulent river empties into a bay, the force of
the current subsided, and she was dropped like silt. The cowardly ones,
hatless and weaponless, ran off toward the pike, but the greater portion
halted, formed in line, called for their comrades to join them, and sent
for more cartridges.

Almost dropping with fatigue, Rachel made her way to a pile of
cracker-boxes by an Osage-orange hedge, on a knoll, and sat down. Some
fragments of hard-bread, dropped on the trampled sod while rations were
being issued, lay around. She was so hungry that she picked up one or
two that were hardly soiled, and nibbled them.

The dreadful clamor of battle grew louder continually. The musketry had
swollen into a sullen roar, with the artillery pulsating high above
it. Crashing vollies of hundreds of muskets fired at once, told of new
regiments joining in the struggle. Rebel brigades raised piercing
treble yells as they charged across the open fields against the Union
positions. The latter responded with deep-lunged cheers, as they
hurled their assailants back. Clouds of slowly curling smoke rose above
thickets filled with maddened men, firing into one another's breasts.
Swarms of rabbits and flocks of birds dashed out in terror from the dark
coverts in which they had hitherto found security.

No gallantry could avail against such overwhelming numbers as assailed
the Union right. The stream of disorganized men flowing back from the
thickets became wider and swifter every minute; every minute, too, the
din of the conflict came closer; every minute the tide of battle rolled
on to regiments lying nearer the pike.

A Surgeon with a squad of stretcher-bearers came up to where Rachel was
sitting.

"Pull down some of those boxes, and fix a place to lay the Colonel till
we can make other arrangements," said a familiar voice. Rachel looked
up, and with some difficulty reconciled a grimy-faced man in torn
clothes with the trim Hospital Surgeon she had known.

"Can that be you, Dr. Denslow?" she said.

He had equal difficulty in recognizing her.

"Is it possible that it is you, Miss Bond?" he said in amazement, after
she had spoken to him again. "Yes, this is I, or as much as is left of
me. And here," and his voice trembled, "is about all that is left of the
regiment. The rest are lying about the roots of those accursed cedars, a
full mile from here."

"And Harry Glen--where is he?" she said, rising hurriedly from the box