The rest of us scouted this fancy, and took it as a rare good joke on that "Reserve Artillery." We said "their guns were not of any use anyhow _except_ for birds' nests; the birds knew they would be perfectly safe to build their nest, and live in _those_ guns. _They_ would not be disturbed!" We "chaffed" the officers and men of that battery most unmercifully. The whole field was on the _grin_, about that birds' nest. The poor fellows were blazing mad, and much mortified; so _disgusted_ that they took their nice, clean guns, and went off to a distant part of the field, to get rid of us. We were _sorry_ to lose them! They afforded _us_ a great deal of fun, if they didn't have any themselves. That blue bird story got all over our part of the Army, and those "Reserve Artillerists" were "sorry that they were living." CHAPTER IV COLD HARBOR AND THE DEFENSE OF RICHMOND About the 20th or 21st we started from Spottsylvania battlefields for others. The Army was on the move, and we went along. For a day or two we were constantly marching, not knowing where we were going, and along roads that I remember very little about. At last, about the 22d, we crossed the North Anna River, and struck the Central Railroad (now "the Chesapeake and Ohio") and marched along it, till we halted near Hanover Junction. Our Army had crossed and stopped on the south bank of the North Anna, two or three miles in front of the Junction, and was taking the river for a new line of defence. Presently the Federal Army came up pushing on, for the same point, and found us, already ahead, in front, and across their track! Then they went at the same old game of trying to break through us. They got across the river on our right, and on our left. General Lee then threw back both wings of his army, clinging with his centre to the river bank. Thus check-mating Grant in a way to make his head swim! Grant after crossing the river, on both our right and left, suddenly found he had got his army cut in two, and he _got out of that_, just as quickly as he could, and gave the North Anna line up as a bad job. We were moving in one direction, or another, about the Junction, for seven or eight days. This North Anna business was far more a matter of brains between the Generals, than brawn between the men. Some sharp fighting, on points right and left, but that was all! General Lee simply "horn swaggled" General Grant, and that was the end of it! We were out one day on the "Doswell Farm," and got under a pretty sharp infantry fire, and fired a few shots, then General Rodes' skirmishers charged, and drove them off, and we saw no more of them.