"
"It is past noon, sir, but I hear the trumpets, calling up our men."
"They are calling to us, too."
The regiment shifted a little to the right, where a great column was
forming for a direct attack upon the Confederate lines. Twenty thousand
men stood in a vast line and forty thousand were behind them to march in
support.
Dick had thought that he would be insensible to emotions, but his heart
began to throb again. The spectacle thrilled and awed him--the great
army marching to the attack and the resolute army awaiting it. Soon he
heard behind him the firing of the artillery which sent shot and shell
over their heads at the enemy. A dozen cannon came into action, then
twenty, fifty, a hundred and more, and the earth trembled with the mighty
concussion.
Dick felt the surge of triumph. They had yet met no answering fire.
Perhaps General Pope and not Colonel Winchester had been right after all,
and the Confederates were crushed. Awaiting them was only a rear guard
which would flee at the first flash of the bayonets in the wood.
The great line marched steadily onward, and the cannon thundered and
roared over the heads of the men raking the wood with steel.
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