On Saturday evening, the 5th of April, we camped on the banks of Duck River, in some pleasant meadows about a mile from the town of Shelbyville. The next day was delightful. The spring of 1862 opened very early, and now the meadows were verdant and the birds singing. The calm, quiet, and beauty of that Sabbath, with the white tents dotting the level fields, and the soldiers luxuriating in one day of rest after the hard march, which had been rendered more fatiguing by the accompaniments of rain and mud, form a very pleasant picture in memory. The next Sabbath came to me under entirely different circumstances. I felt the pressure of a vague melancholy resting upon me,--possibly it was only that pensive feeling often inspired by a fresh, bright, and quiet day in early spring; possibly the faint shadow of coming evil. I devoted the greater part of the day to writing letters to friends and newspapers,--the last I wrote for weary months. On this same day--though we knew it not till afterwards--began the great battle of Shiloh, or Pittsburg Landing, one hundred and fifty miles west of us. On Monday Andrews himself returned to our lines, and asked, as I had anticipated, for permission to renew his enterprise. He had spent several days along the line of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, learning the number of trains, their times of running, and everything else likely to be useful. He had then started for camp, and being provided with passes, so that he could take the most direct road, besides being well mounted, he came in almost as soon as the private soldiers who started much sooner. But not one of the first party would return. They were tired of feeling, as one of them expressed it, that their necks depended upon a lie. Like Schiller's diver, they had plunged once into the abyss and returned in safety; but, unlike that venturous youth, they would not make the second and fatal trial.