The record-union., 1898-12-11

struggling through the mire, and
watching the combat as best he could
by the feeble light of the burned build
ings. The difficulties of the battlefield,
the snow, the darkness, the fierce re-
sistance of the enemy, his inability to
drive them back. filed him with the
unreasonable rage of youth. A man
who despised oaths he began to use
them with rapidity and JUNCTION and
was unconscious Of doing So But his
soldiers needed no spur from their COM
mander. Evans, the Second Lieuten-
ant, a year younger than himself
Fleming had reached the honorable age
of 20-was by his side, firing with his
pistols at the fitting black forms that
opposed them, and around the two
Lieutenants fought a little band of
splashed and begrimed men with a
courage and energy equal to those of
their leaders.
A wall of a house fell on bed of
live Goals and the timbers blazed up
with sudden vividness cutting through
the darkness and casting distorting
light over the snow, the ruined village
and the fighting men.
Fleming paused for a moment to
grasp his field of battle by the new
light that had come. The flames mag
nified some objects, diminished others
and made the whole unreal and fantas-
tic. The forms of his enemies wavered
as the flames flickered and grew to gi-
gantic size, the bloody spots on the
snow spread and united, and the
scorched rafters of an abandoned house
made an ugly black tracery in the sky.
In the momentary stiffness that had
seized them all Fleming heard the
sputtering of the snowfialles as they
fell in the flames
Being able now to see his battlefield,
the Lieutenant knew that the little
church which stood somewhere to his
right was its key, and, shouting to his
men to follow, he rushed forward that
he might seize it at once and cut off
his enemy.
The soldiers fired a volley and dash
ed toward the church, but the leader
of the hostile band was as quick of eye
and as ready of action as Fleming
and when the Lieutenant and his men
entered one door of the church their
antagonists dashed in at the other
Fleming's wrath famed to it's highest
d
to himself that his foe should be SO
stubborn and so prompt, and his re-
solve to overcome him grew with his
anger. He stopped just outside the
door, and his men gathered around
him. The room was dim, but Fleming
saw the outlines of the benches and at
the far end the pulpit. The building,
until then outside the line of battle,
- rTzI-z
light from the blazing house fiared in
at the window and fell across the faces
of his enemies, who were entering at
the farther door. Neither side gave a
thought to the character of the place,
but both knew that a fierce struggle
was sure to follow for the possession
of so strong a fort as brick building,
and they prepared at once for the is
sue. Three or four of the heavy
wooden benches, which served as pews
hastily thrown together, made a good
breastwork. and standing behind it
Fleming and his men waited to see
what the enemy would do.
The hostile leader waited, too, per-
haps with the same purpose, and again
the building was silent. The fallen
wall was. burning finely and the light
from it now shone through the window
with steady radiance and drove the
dusk from the room
Fleming listened intently and heard
nothing from without. The battle,
save for his own part in it, seemed
to have ended or to have gone faraway
The snow. driven against the window
panes, cleaned red in the light of the
flames, and the wind Increased in vio-
lence. All this was but the affair Of
moment, and then Fleming turned
the full attention of eye and ear to his
enemy. That the two little bands hai
been left to fight their battle alone was
no inducement to him to draw awa3
from the conflict rather it increased
his desire to triumph. for the field was
now wholly his own Evans whispered
to him that they must rush the rebels
and Fleming, nodding his head, gav
a quick command to the men, who
Ileaped over the hasty fortification tha;