d steel of the bayonets, a dozen rifles covered
the Confederate leader; their shots rang out, and Bertie Winton reeled
from his saddle and sank down beneath the press as his own Southerners
charged above him in the rush of the onward attack. On an eminence to
the right, through his race-glass, his father watched the engagement,
his eyes seldom withdrawn from the Virginian cavalry, where, for aught
he knew, one of his own blood and name might be--memories of Salamanca
and Quatre Bras, of Moodkee and Ferozeshah, stirring in him, while the
fire of his dead youth thrilled through his veins with the tramp of the
opposing divisions, and he roused like a war-horse at the scent of the
battle as the white shroud of the smoke rolled up to his feet, and the
thunder of the musketry echoed through the valley. Through his glass, he
saw the order given to the troopers held in reserve; he saw the
magnificent advance of that charge in the morning light; he saw the
volley poured in upon them; and he saw them under that shock reel,
stagger, waver, and recoil. The old soldier knew well the critical
danger of that ominous moment of panic and of confusion; then, as the
Confederate Colonel rode out alone and put his horse at that leap on to
the line of steel, into the bristling square, a cry loud as the
Virginian battle-shout broke from him. For when the charger rose in the
air, and the sun shone full on the uncovered head of the Southern
leader, he knew the fair English features that no skies could bronze,
and the fair English hair that blew in the hot wind. He looked once more
upon the man he had denied and had disowned; and, as Bertie Winton
reeled and fell, his father, all unarmed and non-combatant as he was,
drove the spurs into his horse's flanks, and dashing down the steep
hill-side, rode over the heaps of slain, and through the pools of gore,
into the thick of the strife.

With his charger dead under him, beaten down upon one knee, his
sword-arm shivered by a bullet, while the blood poured from his side
where another shot had lodged, Bertie knew that his last hour had come,
as the impetus of the charge broke above him--as a great wave may sweep
over the head of a drowning man--and left him in the centre of the foe.
Kneeling there, while the air was red before his sight that was fast
growing blind from the loss of blood, and the earth seemed to reel and
rock under him, he still fought to desperation, his sabre in his left
hand; he knew