On the evening of Friday, April 4th, there was a preliminary skirmish with the enemy's advance. Rumors came into camp that some of our officers had been taken prisoners by a considerable Rebel force, near our lines, and that pickets had been firing. A brigade, the Seventieth, Seventy-second, and Forty-eighth Ohio, was sent out to see about it. They came upon a party of Rebels, perhaps a thousand strong, and after a sharp little action drove them off, losing Major Crocket, of the Seventy-second Ohio, and a couple of lieutenants from the Seventieth, prisoners, taking in return some sixteen, and driving the Rebels back to a battery they were found to have already in position, at no great distance from our lines. General Lew. Wallace's troops, at Crump's Landing, were ordered out under arms, and they marched to Adamsville, half-way between the river and Purdy, to take position there and resist any attack in that direction. The night passed in dreary rain, but without further Rebel demonstration; and it was generally supposed that the affair had been an ordinary picket-fight, presaging nothing more. Major-General Grant had indeed said there was great probability of a Rebel attack, but there were no appearances of his making any preparations for such an unlooked-for event, and so the matter was dismissed. Yet on Saturday there was more skirmishing along our advanced lines. [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL SLOCUM.] There can be no doubt the plan of the Rebel leaders was to attack and demolish Grant's army before Buell's reinforcements arrived. There were rumors, indeed, that such a movement had been expressly ordered from headquarters at Richmond, as being absolutely necessary, as a last bold stroke, to save the falling fortunes of the Confederacy in the West; though of that, no one, I presume, knows anything. But the Rebel leaders at Corinth were fully aware that they largely outnumbered Grant, and that no measures had been taken to strengthen the position at Pittsburgh Landing; while they knew equally well that when Buell's entire Kentucky army arrived, and was added to Grant's forces, they could not possibly expect to hold their vitally important position at Corinth against us. Their only hope, therefore, lay in attacking Grant before Buell arrived, and so defeating us in detail. Fortunately they timed their movements a day too late.