A shot or two heard somewhere in that obscurity counted as nothing with the long fusillade that had swept it in the daytime; the passing of a single life, more or less, amounted to little in the long roll-call of the day's slaughter.
But with the first beams of the morning sun--and the slowly moving "relief detail" from the camp--came a weird half-resurrection of that ghastly field.

Then it was that the long rays of sunlight, streaming away a mile beyond the battle line, pointed out the first harvest of the dead where the reserves had been posted.

There they lay in heaps and piles, killed by solid shot or bursting shells that had leaped the battle line to plunge into the waiting ranks beyond.

As the sun lifted higher its beams fell within the range of musketry fire, where the dead lay thicker,--even as they had fallen when killed outright,--with arms extended and feet at all angles to the field.

As it touched these dead upturned faces, strangely enough it brought out no expression of pain or anguish--but rather as if death had arrested them only in surprise and awe.