by the light that crossed their features when he told of the army's
recoil from the shock, and of the wild joy that ran through the
ranks when they took up their march to the left, and realized that
this time they were not going back.--So they came to the twelve
days' grapple of the Spottsylvania Campaign.

There was still the Wilderness thicket; the enemy's intrenchments,
covering about eight miles, lay in the shape of a dome, and at the
cupola of it were breastworks of heavy timbers banked with earth,
and with a ditch and a tangle of trees in front. The place was the
keystone of the Confederate arch, and the name of it was "the
Angle"--"Bloody Angle!" Montague heard the man who sat next to him
draw in his breath, as if a spasm of pain had shot through him.

At dawn two brigades had charged and captured the place. The enemy
returned to the attack, and for twenty hours thereafter the two
armies fought, hurling regiment after regiment and brigade after
brigade into the trenches. There was a pouring rain, and the smoke
hung black about them; they could only see the flashes of the guns,
and the faces of the enemy, here and there.

The Colonel described the approach of his regiment. They lay down
for a moment in a swamp, and the minie-balls sang like swarming
bees, and split the blades of the grass above them. Then they
charged, over ground that ran with human blood. In the trenches the
bodies of dead and dying men lay three deep, and were trampled out
of sight in the mud by the feet of those who fought. They would
crouch behind the works, lifting their guns high over their heads,
and firing into the throngs on the other side; again and again men
sprang upon the breastworks and fired their muskets, and then fell