large chestnut, not fifty yards from Fitz Hugh was struck by a shot.
The solid trunk, nearly three feet in diameter, parted asunder as if it
were the brittlest of vegetable matter. The upper portion started aside
with a monstrous groan, dropped in a standing posture to the earth, and
then toppled slowly, sublimely prostrate, its branches crashing and all
its leaves wailing. Ere long, a little further to the front, another
Anak of the forest went down; and, mingled with the noise of its sylvan
agony, there arose sharp cries of human suffering. Then Colonel
Colburn, a broad-chested and ruddy man of thirty-five, with a look of
indignant anxiety in his iron-gray eyes, rode up to the brigade
commander.

"This is very annoying, Colonel," he said. "I am losing my men without
using them. That last tree fell into my command."

"Are they firing toward our left?" asked Waldron. "Not a shot."

"Very good," said the chief, with a sigh of contentment. "If we can
only keep them occupied in this direction! By the way, let your men lie
down under the fallen tree, as far as it will go. It will protect them
from others."

Colburn rode back to his regiment. Waldron looked impatiently at his
watch. At that moment a fierce burst of line firing arose in front,
followed and almost overborne by a long-drawn yell, the scream of
charging men. Waldron put up his watch, glanced excitedly at Fitz Hugh,
and smiled.

"I must forgive or forget," the latter could not help saying to
himself. "All the rest of life is nothing compared with this."