for cavalry the day, barrin' it's escortin' the
doughboys' prisoners, if they take any?--bad 'cess to the job. Sure
it's an infantry fight, and must be, wid the field-guns helpin', and
the siege pieces boomin' away over the throops in the mud betwigst
our own breastworks and the inner line of our forts.

"Oh, by this and by that," the corporal grumbled on, "ould Lee's not
the gintleman I tuk him for at all, at all,--discomfortin' us in the
rain,--and yesterday an illigant day for fightin'. Couldn't he wait,
like the dacint ould boy he's reported, for a dhry mornin', instead av
turnin' his byes out in the shlush and destroyin' me chanst av
breakfast? It's spring chickens I'd ordhered."

"You may get up to spring-chicken country soon, now," said Bader. "I'm
thinking this is near the end; it's the last assault that Lee will
ever deliver."

"Faith, I dunno," said the corporal; "that's what we've been saying
sinst last fall, but the shtay of them Johnnies bates Banagher and the
prophets. Hoo--ow! by the powers! did you hear them yell? Fwat? The
saints be wid us! who'd 'a' thought it possible? Byes! Bader! Harry!
luk at the Johnnies swarmin' up the face of Hell!"

Off there Harry could dimly see, rising over the near horizon made by
tents, a straggling rush of men up the steep slope, while the rebel
yell came shrill from a multitude behind on the level ground that was
hidden from the place occupied by the cavalry regiment. In the next
moment the force mounting Fort Hell's slope fell away, some lying
where shot down, some rolling, some running and stumbling in heaps;
then a tremendous musketry and field-gun fire growled to and fro under
the heavy smoke round and about and out in front of the embrasures,
which had never ceased their regular discharge over the heads of the
fort's defenders and immediate assailants.

Suddenly Harry noted a slackening of the battle; it gradually but soon
dropped away to nothing, and now no sound of small-arms in any
direction was heard in the lengthening intervals of reports from the
siege pieces far and near.

"And so that's the end of it," said Kennedy. "Sure it was hot work for
a while! Faix, I thought onct the doughboys was nappin' too long, and
ould Hell would be bullyin' away at ourselves. Now, thin, can we have
a bite in paice? I'll shtart wid a few sausages, Brownie, and you may
send in the shpring chickens wid some oyshters the second coorse. No!
Oh, by the powers, 'tis too mane t