"Aren't you the boy who held my horse?"
Ned saluted:
"Yes, sir."
"Then in the name of Almighty God, where did you get that man?"
Ned pointed excitedly to the hilltop:
"Right yonder, sir,—there's plenty more of 'em up there!"
The Colonel scratched his head, looked Ned over from head to heel and broke into a laugh.
"Well, I'll be damned," he said at last. "Take him to the rear and report to me to-night. I want to see you."
Ned saluted and hurried to the rear with his prisoner.
The sun was slowly sinking in a sea of blood. The red faded to purple, the purple to grey, the grey into the shadows of night and still the guns were thundering from their heights. It was nine o'clock before they were silent and Lee's torn and mangled army lay down among their dead and wounded to wait the dawn and renew the fight. They had been compelled to breast the most devastating fire to which an assaulting army had been subjected in the history of war. The trees of the woods had been literally torn and mangled as if two cyclones had met and ripped them to pieces.