ursuing,
had passed out of it forever, leaving only its dead behind, and knowing
nothing more of that struggle than its own impact and momentum--even
this wild excitement had long since evaporated with the stinging smoke
of gunpowder, the acrid smell of burning rags from the clothing of a
dead soldier fired by a bursting shell, or the heated reek of sweat and
leather. A cool breath that seemed to bring back once more the odor of
the upturned earthworks along the now dumb line of battle began to move
from the suggestive darkness beyond.

But into that awful penetralia of death and silence there was no
invasion--there had been no retreat. A few of the wounded had been
brought out, under fire, but the others had been left with the dead for
the morning light and succor. For it was known that in that horrible
obscurity, riderless horses, frantic with the smell of blood, galloped
wildly here and there, or, maddened by wounds, plunged furiously at
the intruder; that the wounded soldier, still armed, could not always
distinguish friend from foe or from the ghouls of camp followers who
stripped the dead in the darkness and struggled with the dying. A shot
or two heard somewhere in that obscurity counted as nothing with the
long fusillade that had swept it in the daytime; the passing of a single
life, more or less, amounted to little in the long roll-call of the
day's slaughter.

But with the first beams of the morning sun--and the slowly moving
"relief detail" from the camp--came a weird half-resurrection of that
ghastly field. Then it was that the long rays of sunlight, streaming
away a mile beyond the battle line, pointed out the first harvest of
the dead where the reserves had been posted. There they lay in heaps
and piles, killed by solid shot or bursting shells that had leaped the
battle line to plunge into the waiting ranks beyond. As the sun lifted
higher its beams fell within the range of musketry fire, where the dead
lay thicker,--even as they had fallen when killed outright,--with arms
extended and feet at all angles to the field. As it touched these dead
upturned faces, strangely enough it brought out no expression of pain or
anguish--but rather as if death had arrested them only in surprise and
awe. It revealed on the lips of those who had been mortally wounded
and had turned upon their side the relief which death had brought their
suffering, sometimes shown in a faint smile. Mounting higher, it glanced
upon the ac