There was now an interval of comparative quiet. We could walk around, and talk, and look about us, a little. Now and then a bullet struck the ground close to us, and presently one of the infantry was struck slightly. It was plain that a concealed sharp-shooter had our range, and we began to watch for him. Soon one of us caught a glimpse of him; he was up a tree some distance out in front, and he would cautiously edge around the trunk and fire, dodging back behind the trunk to load again. One of the Texans went over the works, and stole from stump to stump off toward the left, and for some time was out of our sight. Presently, we saw that sharp-shooter slyly stealing around the tree, and raise his rifle. The next instant, we saw a puff of smoke from a bush, off to the left, and that sharp-shooter came plunging down, headforemost out of the tree, dead as Hector. Our man had crept round so that when the Federal slid around the tree, he exposed his body, and the Texan shot him. Robert Stiles, the Adjutant of the Battalion, who had been, until lately, a member of our Battery, and was very devoted to it, and his comrades in it, had come to the lines to see how we were getting on, and gave us news of other parts of the line. He, Beau Barnes, and others of us were standing by our guns, talking, when a twenty pounder Parrott shell came grazing just over our guns, passed on, and about forty yards behind us struck a pine tree, about two and a half to three feet in diameter. The shell had turned. It struck that big tree sideways, and cut it entirely off, and threw it from the stump. It fell in an upright position, struck the ground, stood, for an instant, and then, came crashing down. It was a very creepy suggestion of what that shell might have done to one of us. A few moments after another struck the ground right by us and ricochetted. After it passed us, as was frequently the case, we caught sight of it, and followed its upward flight until it seemed to be going straight up to the sky. Stiles said "There it goes as though flung by the hand of a giant." Beau Barnes, who was _not_ poetical, exclaimed, "Giant be darned; there ain't any giant can fling 'em like that." He was right! Strange how the most trivial incidents keep their place in the memory, along with the great events, amidst which they occurred! I remember the fall of that tree, and the remark about that shell, and a small piece of pork which an Arkansas soldier gave me, and which, in jumping to the guns, I dropped into a mudhole, and never found again, though I fished for it diligently in the muddy water, and a _pig_, which was calmly rooting around near our guns, under fire, and which we watched, hoping he would be hit, so that we could get his meat, before the infantry did, to satisfy our wolfish hunger, just as distinctly as the several fierce battles which were fought that day.