wide detour to the right as if to flank the enemy's left.

It was a mile and a quarter--it was a march of fully twenty minutes--to
the edge of the woodland, the proposed cover of the column. Ten minutes
before this point was reached a tiny puff of smoke showed on the brow
of the hostile ridge; then, at an interval of several seconds, followed
the sound of a distant explosion; then, almost immediately, came the
screech of a rifled shell. Every man who heard it swiftly asked
himself, "Will it strike me?" But even as the words were thought out it
had passed, high in air, clean to the rear, and burst harmlessly. A few
faces turned upward and a few eyes glanced backward, as if to see the
invisible enemy. But there was no pause in the column; it flowed onward
quietly, eagerly, and with business-like precision; it gave forth no
sound but the trampling of feet and the muttering of the officers,
"Steady, men! Forward, men!"

The Confederates, however, had got their range. A half minute later
four puffs of smoke dotted the ridge, and a flight of hoarse humming
shrieks tore the air. A little aureole cracked and splintered over the
First, followed by loud cries of anguish and a brief, slight confusion.
The voice of an officer rose sharply out of the flurry, "Close up,
Company A! Forward, men!" The battalion column resumed its even
formation in an instant, and tramped unitedly onward, leaving behind it
two quivering corpses and a wounded man who tottered rearward.

Then came more screeches, and a shell exploded over the highroad,
knocking a gunner lifeless from his carriage. The brigade commander
glanced anxiously along his batteries, and addressed a few words to his
chief of artillery. Presently the four Napoleons set forward at a
gallop for the wood, while the four Parrotts wheeled to the right,