The youth stared at the land in front of him. Its foliages now seemed to veil powers and horrors. He was of the of orders that started the charge, although from the corners of his eyes he saw an officer, who looked like a boy a-horseback, come , waving his hat. Suddenly he felt a straining and heaving among the men. The line fell slowly forward like a toppling wall, and, with a convulsive that was intended for a cheer, the began its journey. The youth was pushed and jostled for a moment before he understood the movement at all, but directly he lunged ahead and began to run.  
He his eye upon a distant and prominent of trees where he had concluded the enemy were to be met, and he ran toward it as toward a goal. He had believed throughout that it was a question of getting over an unpleasant matter as quickly as possible, and he ran , as if pursued for a murder. His face was hard and tight with the stress of his endeavor. His eyes were fixed in a glare. And with his soiled and disordered dress, his red and features by the rag with its spot of blood, his wildly swinging rifle, and banging accouterments, he looked to be an insane soldier.
 
As the regiment swung from its position out into a cleared space the woods and before it . Yellow flames leaped toward it from many directions. The forest made a tremendous objection.
 
The line lurched straight for a moment. Then the right wing swung forward; it in turn was surpassed by the left. the center careered to the front until the regiment was a wedge-shaped mass, but an instant later the of the bushes, trees, and places on the ground split the command and it into detached clusters.
 
The youth, light-footed, was unconsciously in advance. His eyes still kept note of the clump of trees. From all places near it the yell of the enemy could be heard. The little flames of rifles leaped from it. The song of the bullets was in the air and shells among the treetops. One tumbled directly into the middle of a hurrying group and exploded in fury. There was an instant spectacle of a man, almost over it, throwing up his hands to shield his eyes.
 
Other men, punched by bullets, fell in agonies. The regiment left a coherent trail of bodies.
 
They had passed into a clearer atmosphere. There was an effect like a revelation in the new appearance of the landscape. Some men working madly at a battery were plain to them, and the opposing infantry's lines were defined by the gray walls and fringes of smoke.
 
It seemed to the youth that he saw everything. Each blade of the green grass was bold and clear. He thought that he was aware of every change in the thin, that floated idly in sheets. The brown or gray trunks of the trees showed each roughness of their surfaces. And the men of the regiment, with their starting eyes and sweating faces, running madly, or falling, as if thrown headlong, to queer, heaped-up corpses--all were comprehended. His mind took a mechanical but firm impression, so that afterward everything was pictured and explained to him, save why he himself was there.
 
But there was a made from this furious rush. The men, pitching forward insanely, had burst into cheerings, moblike and barbaric, but in strange keys that can arouse the dullard and the . It made a mad enthusiasm that, it seemed, would be of checking itself before and . There was the that encounters despair and death, and is heedless and blind to the . It is a temporary but absence of selfishness. And because it was of this order was the reason, perhaps, why the youth wondered, afterward, what reasons he could have had for being there.
 
Presently the straining pace ate up the energies of the men. As if by agreement, the leaders began to slacken their speed. The volleys directed against them had had a seeming windlike effect. The regiment snorted and blew. Among some trees it began to and hesitate. The men, staring intently, began to wait for some of the distant walls of smoke to move and disclose to them the scene. Since much of their strength and their breath had vanished, they returned to caution. They were become men again.
 
The youth had a vague belief that he had run miles, and he thought, in a way, that he was now in some new and unknown land.
 
The moment the regiment ceased its advance the protesting splutter of musketry became a steadied roar. Long and accurate fringes of smoke spread out. From the top of a small hill came level belchings of yellow flame that caused an whistling in the air.
 
The men, halted, had opportunity to see some of their comrades dropping with moans and . A few lay under foot, still or . And now for an instant the men stood, their rifles slack in their hands, and watched the regiment . They appeared dazed and stupid. This spectacle seemed to paralyze them, overcome them with a fatal . They stared woodenly at the sights, and, lowering their eyes, looked from face to face. It was a strange pause, and a strange silence.
 
Then, above the sounds of the outside , arose the roar of the . He strode suddenly , his infantile features black with rage.
 
"Come on, yeh fools!" he . "Come on! Yeh can't stay here. Yeh must come on." He said more, but much of it could not be understood.
 
He started rapidly forward, with his head turned toward the men, "Come on," he was s............