More troops from the dying battle on the north came to Lee's aid, and every attempt of McClellan to take Sharpsburg failed.
Dick, fighting with his comrades on the north, knew little of what was passing on the peninsula in the south, but he became conscious after a while that the appalling fury of the battle around him was diminishing.
He had not seen such a desperate hand-to-hand battle at either Shiloh or the Second Manassas, and they were terrible enough.

But he felt as the Confederates themselves had felt, that the Southern army was fighting for existence.
But as the day waned, Dick believed that they would never be able to crush Jackson.

The Union troops always returned to the attack, but the men in gray never failed to meet it, and actual physical exhaustion overwhelmed the combatants.

Pennington went down, and Dick dragged him to his feet, fearing that he was wounded mortally, but found that his comrade had merely dropped through weakness.
The long day of heat and strife neared its close.

Neither Northern tenacity nor Southern fire could win, and the sun began to droop over the field piled so thickly with bodies.