Off on the flank the ominous tread of Southern horsemen was coming fast.
Bullets began now to rain among them.

The regiment would have been swept away bodily had the men not been lying down.

But their time to wait and hold their fire was at an end.

The colonel gave the word, and a sheet of light leaped from the mouths of their rifles.

A vast gap appeared in the Southern line before them, but in a minute or two it closed up, and the Southern masses came on again, as menacing as ever.