e tall treetops where the birds were cheeping. In the meantime
a Federal balloon, mounting into the amethyst air, discovered that
this stretch of woodland was thronged with grey soldiers, and signalled
as much to Fitz John Porter, falling back with steadiness to his second
line at Gaines's Mill. He posted several batteries, and ordered them to
shell the wood.

In the purple light the guns began. The men in grey had to take the
storm; they were in the wood and orders had not come to leave it. They
took it in various ways, some sullenly, some contemptuously, some with
nervous twitchings of head and body, many with dry humour and a
quizzical front. The Confederate soldier was fast developing a
characteristic which stayed with him to the end. He joked with death and
gave a careless hand to suffering. A few of the more imaginative and
aesthetically minded lost themselves in open-mouthed contemplation of the
bestormed forest and its behaviour.

The cannonade was furious, and though not many of the grey soldiers
suffered, the grey trees did. Great and small branches were lopped off.
In the dim light they came tumbling down. They were borne sideways,
tearing through the groves and coverts, or, caught by an exploding shell
and torn twig from twig, they fell in a shower of slivers, or, chopped
clean from the trunk, down they crashed from leafy level to level till
they reached the forest floor. Beneath them rose shouts of warning, came
a scattering of grey mortals. Younger trees were cut short off. Their
woodland race was run; down they rushed with their festoons of vines,
crushing the undergrowth of laurel and hazel. Other shells struck the
red brown resinous bodies of pines, set loose dangerous mists of bark
and splinter. As by a whirlwind the air was filled with torn and flying
growth, with the dull crash and leafy fall of the forest non-combatants.
The light was no longer pure; it was murky here as elsewhere. The violet
fields and the vermeil gardens were blotted out, and in the shrieking of
the shells the birds could not have been heard to sing even were they
there. They were not there; they were all flown far away. It was dark in
the wood, dark and full of sound and of moving bodies charged with
danger. The whirlwind swept it, the treetops snapped off. "_Attention!_"
The grey soldiers were glad to hear the word. "_Forward! March!_" They
were blithe to hear the order and to leave the wood.

They moved out into old fields, g