e, a preliminary to the final surrender."

"Then you order me to withdraw?" asked Duncan.

"Yes, certainly, and peremptorily if you wish, though you are not under
my command," answered Colonel Cabell. "It is the best thing you can do
for yourself, for your men, for your horses, and for the country."

Duncan immediately obeyed the order, in a degree at least. He promptly
withdrew his men to the top of a little hillock in the rear and there
watched the progress of the final fight. His nerves were all a-quiver.
He was a young man, twenty-five years old perhaps, full of vigor, full
of enthusiasm, full of fight. He was a trifle less than six feet high,
with a lithe and symmetrical body, lean almost to emaciation by reason
of arduous service and long starvation. He had a head that instantly
attracted attention by its unusual size and its statuesque shape. He was
bronzed almost to the complexion of a mulatto, but without any touch of
yellow in the bronze. He was dark by nature, of intensely nervous
temperament, and obviously a man capable of enormous determination and
unfaltering endurance.

He had not yet lost the instinct of battle, and it galled him that he
must sit idly there on his horse, with his men awaiting his orders,
simply observing a fight in which he strongly desired to participate. He
could see the Federal lines gradually closing in upon both flanks of the
artillery, with the certainty that they must presently envelop and
capture it. Seasoned soldier that he was, he could not endure the
thought of standing still while such a work of war was going on.

Seeing the situation he turned to his men, who were armed only with
swords and pistols, and in a voice so calm that it belied his impulse,
he said to them:

"This is our last chance for a fight, boys. I am going into the middle
of that mix! Anybody who chooses to follow me can come along!"

Every man in that little company of eleven had two pistols in his saddle
holsters and two upon his hips, and every man carried in addition a
heavy cavalry saber capable of doing execution at close quarters. They
were gentlemen soldiers, all. The cause for which they had battled for
four long years was as dear to them now as it ever had been. More
important still, their courage was as unflinching in this obvious climax
and catastrophe of the war they had waged, as it had been at Bull Run in
the beginning of that struggle, or in the Seven Days' Fight, or at
Fredericksburg, o