There the old fellow stood, pawing the ground and twisting about the tree, hungry and thirsty and tired. He had knocked the challenge down and split it with his stamping feet. I gathered it up and took it to Roy, and a real lively smile crossed his face, and immediately he fell asleep. What strange freaks of fancy and of desire and ambition we are! I am told that Roy was promoted again on the field just before he was shot, so he is as big a captain now as I am, but that fact has not yet appeared to come back to him. Who got the challenge at the last was his first thought! I suspect he was thinking of that when he fell, and his returning consciousness took up the thread of thought right where he had dropped it or where it was broken by the lapse. It has not seemed to surprise him to see me. He acts as if I had been about him all along, and yet it has been nearly two years since we were together! Of course I act the same way so as not to excite him. He has had two long, good, natural naps to-day and I talked to him between. He knows he is to go to Nashville, and I had a sneaking idea that when I mentioned Emma West he looked uncommonly well pleased with the scheme. Do you know whether they got 'spoony,' after I left home? Anyhow that Nashville scheme seems to suit him all the way through. I feel absolutely light-hearted and gay to-day, mother mine. It is the reaction from the strain of yesterday and last night, I suppose; but if I could, I'd dance or sing or something. Since I can't do that I'll content myself with writing you rather a frivolous letter. You just ought to see these trees! They are simply riddled with shot and shell. This shows, too, one very good reason why so few of the rounds of ammunition take effect in the men. They shoot entirely too high. Quite above the heads of the tallest men. The trees are simply cartridge cases, and the limbs are torn away. The mud! You ought to see it. You'd think you never saw mud before. It took sixteen mules and the entire regiment hitched to one of the cannon to pull it along the road the Johnnies retreated over. A man we captured was one who had given out at the job. Poor fellows! they had a hard time of it all around, and we fresh troops who landed from the gunboats were the last straw in their cup of tribulation. I reckon they don't think they got their tribulation through a straw though, and the figure is a trifle mixed; but as a soldier I can't stop to edit copy! Oh, mother, I wish I could make you feel as relieved as I do to-day. Skittish is the word--I feel really skittish; because I am so sure Boy is in no danger. I believe he will be able to go home before many weeks, and meantime, for all comforts, he will be as if he were at home. When he comes you can get the whole story of his fall, the fight, and his promotion. Dear old fellow! He's a great big captain now, and I stick right there. I'm acting Inspector-General now on the staff, but I'm really only a captain yet.