oops were at last halted. Regiments and
brigades, broken and detached through their encounters with thickets,
grew together again and lines were faced toward the pursuing bark of
the enemy's infantry.

This noise, following like the yelpings of eager, metallic hounds,
increased to a loud and joyous burst, and then, as the sun went
serenely up the sky, throwing illuminating rays into the gloomy
thickets, it broke forth into prolonged pealings. The woods began to
crackle as if afire.

"Whoop-a-dadee," said a man, "here we are! Everybody fightin'. Blood
an' destruction."

"I was willin' t' bet they'd attack as soon as th' sun got fairly up,"
savagely asserted the lieutenant who commanded the youth's company. He
jerked without mercy at his little mustache. He strode to and fro with
dark dignity in the rear of his men, who were lying down behind
whatever protection they had collected.

A battery had trundled into position in the rear and was thoughtfully
shelling the distance. The regiment, unmolested as yet, awaited the
moment when the gray shadows of the woods before them should be slashed
by the lines of flame. There was much growling and swearing.

"Good Gawd," the youth grumbled, "we're always being chased around like
rats! It makes me sick. Nobody seems to know where we go or why we
go. We just get fired around from pillar to post and get licked here
and get licked there, and nobody knows what it's done for. It makes a
man feel like a damn' kitten in a bag. Now, I'd like to know what the
eternal thunders we was marched into these woods for anyhow, unless it
was to give the rebs a regular pot shot at us. We came in here and got
our legs all tangled up in these cussed briers, and then we begin to
fight and the rebs had an easy time of it. Don't tell me it's just
luck! I know better. It's this derned old--"

The friend seemed jaded, but he interrupted his comrade with a voice of
calm confidence. "It'll turn out all right in th' end," he said.

"Oh, the devil it will! You always talk like a dog-hanged parson.
Don't tell me! I know--"

At this time there was an interposition by the savage-minded
lieutenant, who was obliged to vent some of his inward dissatisfaction
upon his men. "You boys shut right up! There no need 'a your wastin'
your breath in long-winded arguments about this an' that an' th' other.
You've been jawin' like a lot 'a old hens. All you've got t' do is to
fight, an' you'll ge