blow. Its march will be covered by the friendly woods. The keen-eyed
adjutants are already warning the captains of every detail of
the attack. Calm and unmoved, the gaunt centurions of the thinned
host accepted the honorable charges of the forlorn hope. Valois'
powder-seasoned fragment of the army was a "corps d'elite." Peyton
wondered, as he watched his suffering colonel, if either would see
another sparkling jewel-braided night.

The blow of Hood must be the hammer of Thor.

"To-morrow, yes, to-morrow," mechanically replied Valois. "I will
be on duty to-morrow."

"To-night, Peyton," he simply said, "I must suffer my last agony.
My poor Dolores! Gone--my wife."

The tears trickled through his fingers as he bowed his graceful
head.

"And my little Isabel," he softly said; "she will be an orphan.
Will God protect that tender child? "Valois was talking to himself,
with his eyes fixed on the dark night-shadows hiding the Federal
lines. A stern, defiant gaze.

Peyton shivered with a nervous chill.

"Colonel, this must not be." In the silence of the brooding night,
it seems a ghastly call from another world, this message of death.

Valois proudly checks himself.