Six long-bodied, strong-limbed horses, their hides reeking with sweat, and their nostrils distended with intense effort, tore past, snatching after them, as if it were a toy, a gleaming brass cannon, surrounded by galloping cannoneers, who goaded the draft horses on with blows with the flats of their drawn sabers.

Another gun, with its straining horses and galloping attendants, and another, and another, until six great, grim pieces, with their scores of desperately eager men and horses, had rushed by toward the front.
It was a sight to stir the coldest blood.

The excited infantry boys, wrought up to the last pitch by the spectacle, sprang back into the road, cheered vociferously, and rushed on after the battery.
Hardly had the echoes of their voices died away, when they heard the battery join its thunders to the din of the fight.
Then wounded men, powder-stained, came straggling back--men with shattered arms and gashed faces and garments soaked with blood from bleeding wounds.
"Hurrah, boys!" each shouted with weakened voice, as his eyes lighted up at sight of the regiment, "We're whipping them; but hurry forward! You're needed." "If you ain't pretty quick," piped one girl-faced boy, with a pensive smile, as he sat weakly down on a stone and pressed a delicate hand over a round red spot that had just appeared on the breast of his blouse, "you'll miss all the fun.

We've about licked 'em already.

Oh!--" Abe and Kent sprang forward to catch him, but he was dead almost before they could reach him.