ing, saw at length the white hat-bands, opened fire, and heard
his heavy answer. The firing slackened on our front, strengthened on our
right, and our platoon was again detached, to take care of this new
danger. As we waited at the edge of a wood, while the major held us for
orders, a half-grown robin, with speckled breast, nervously flew about us
as if he wished to take refuge from the noises that distracted him. Into
the underbrush we plunged again, were posted here, and fired; were sent
there, and fired again; were hurried at the double to the flank, where I,
coming behind the rest, was held by the captain and posted with a
rear-guard, to fire upon the enemy if he appeared across a little
clearing. It was evident that the enemy's intentions could not be guessed
in advance. I heard very rapid firing at my back, and a burst of
cheering. Then the bugle blew, and the whistles sounded everywhere
through the wood. Of the enemy I had had few glimpses, and in general I
realized that the confusion had been extreme.

As I plodded through underbrush to rejoin my company, I came across some
white-banded fellows who, with fixed bayonets and heavy breathing, had
evidently just been charging. Meeting presently a member of our company,
I asked him what had taken place in this part of the encounter. "Oh,
those fellows? You never saw anything so foolish. They wandered out from
the woods and fixed bayonets in the open, and we fired at them for five
minutes, at a hundred and fifty yards, before they began their charge. Of
course they stopped at fifty yards from us, the rule, you know. Then our
lieutenant asked theirs what his men wore to make them bullet-proof, and
we hoped there would be some back talk, for the other fellow was mad.
Pendleton's tongue does cut. But an umpire came and ruled them out, and
we're sure of them, anyway."

Well, fighting in the woods is "impossible," as the major explained to us
later at conference. Apparently if it must be, it must, but there can be
very little science in it. At the conference our officers explained what
had happened at different parts of our line, and we were all sure that we
had won. But I noticed that the two battalions held their conferences
separately, and concluded that the same consoling deduction was being
made at the other discussion. Yet one idea must have fixed itself in the
mind of every thinking man there: we were too green, and some of our
platoon-leaders were too green, for ef