l struggle, and the rising clouds
of dust, ashes and smoke shot with the rapid flame of the guns, like
incessant sheet-lightning.

The clouds had become so dense that the battle, though nearer, grew
dimmer in many of its aspects; but the distorted and unreal human
figures moved like shadows on a screen and were yet visible, springing
about and crossing and recrossing in an infinite black tracery that the
eye could not follow. But to neither of the three did the thought of
fear yet come. They were still watchers of the arena, from high seats,
and the battle was not to take them in its coils.

The flame, the red light from the guns, grew more vivid, and was so
rapid and incessant that it became a steady glare, illuminating the vast
scene on which the battle was outspread; the black stems of the oaks and
pines, the guns--some wheelless and broken now, the charging lines,
fallen horses scattered in the scrub, all the medley and strain of a
titanic battle.

The sparks flew in vast showers. Bits of charred wood from the burning
forest, caught up by the wind, began to fall on the thin roof of the old
house, and kept up a steady, droning patter. The veil of gray ashes upon
the floor and on the scanty furniture grew thicker. The coloured woman
never ceased for a moment to cry drearily.

"It is still doubtful!" murmured Harley.

His keen, discerning eye began to see a method, an order in all this
huge tumult--signs of a design, and of another design to defeat it--the
human mind seeking to achieve an end. One side was the North and another
the South--but which was his own he could not tell. For the present he
knew not where to place his sympathies, and the fortunes of the battle
were all unknown to him.

He looked again at his watch. Mid-afternoon. Hours and hours had passed
and still the doubtful battle hung on the turning of a hair; but his
study of it, his effort to trace its fortune through all the intricate
maze of smoke and flame, did not cease. He sought to read the purposes
of the two master minds which marshaled their forces against each other,
to evolve order from chaos and to read what was written already.

Suddenly he uttered a low cry. He could detect now the colour of the
uniforms. There on the right was the gray, his own side, and Harley's
soul dropped like lead in water. The gray were yielding slowly, almost
imperceptibly, but nevertheless were yielding. The blue masses were
pouring upon them continually, h