Well! the morning wore on, and so did we. By and by, the sun came out through the fog and clouds, and began to make it hot for us. The dampness of the earth made this an easy job. The sun got higher and hotter every minute. The way that close, sultry heat did _roast_ us was pitiful. We would have "larded the lean earth as we walked along," except that hard bones and muscles of gaunt men didn't _yield_ any "lard" to speak of. The _breakfast_ hour was not observed, _i. e._, not with any ceremony. "Cracker nibbling on the fly" was all the visible reminder of that time-honored custom. We were not there to eat, but, to get to Spottsylvania Court House; and _steps_ were more to that purpose than _steaks_, so we omitted the steaks, and put in the steps; and we put them in very fast, and were putting in a great many of them, it appeared to us. At last, just about twelve o'clock our road wound down to a stream, which I think was the _Po_, one of the head waters of the Mattaponi River, and then, we went up a very long hill, a bank, surmounted by a rail fence on the left side of the road, and the woods on the other. =Stuart's Four Thousand Cavalry= Just as we got to the top (our Battery happened just then to be ahead of all the troops, and was the first of the columns to reach the spot), the road came up to the level of the land on the left, which enabled us to see, what, though close by us, had been concealed by the high roadside bank. A farm gate opened into a field, around a farmhouse and outbuildings, and there, covering that field was the whole of Fitz Lee's Division of Stuart's cavalry. These heroic fellows had for two days been fighting Warren's corps of Federal infantry, which General Grant had sent to seize this very line on which _we_ had now arrived. They had fought, mostly dismounted, from hill to hill, from fence to fence, from tree to tree; and so obstinate was their resistance, and so skillful the dispositions of the matchless Stuart, that some thirty thousand men had been forced to take about twenty-six hours to get seven or eight miles, by about forty-five hundred cavalry. But, it was incomparable cavalry, and J. E. B. Stuart was handling it. It was some credit to that Corps to have marched any at all! Thanks to the superb conduct of the cavalry, General Lee's movement had succeeded! We had beaten the Federal column, and were here, before them, on this much-coveted line, and meant to hold it, too. I note here in passing, that this Spottsylvania business was a "white day" for the cavalry. When the army came to know of what the cavalry had done, and _how they had done it_, there was a general outburst of admiration,--the recognition that brave men give to the brave. Stuart and his men were written higher than ever on the honor roll, and the whole army was ready to take off its hat to salute the cavalry.