Shortly after, Captain G. M. L. Johnston, of General Negley's staff, reported to Thomas for duty, and the general requested him to venture toward the advancing force, and learn, if possible, to which army it belonged. Johnston was gone for some time, running the gauntlet of the rebel sharp-shooters, who were fast enveloping Thomas's left wing. During his absence the anxiety of Thomas increased until it grew painful to the observer, and the relaxation which followed the revelation of the fact that the coming force were friends was a positive relief to the by-standers. As Johnston returned with General Steedman the nerves of Thomas calmed down, and his excitement was hardly visible save in the petulant tone and manner in which he cursed Bragg for fighting without any system. During the fight which ensued he remained as passive and apparently as unconcerned as if he were in the safest place imaginable. During the morning of the second day of the same battle I was again near General Thomas when the rebels made a vigorous attack on his breast-works. He and a single staff officer were sitting a little in the rear of the centre of the line, and just in range of the shells which the enemy was throwing with great vigor and rapidity. While thus exposed, a shell passed between the general and his aid, causing them to look at each other with a quiet smile. A moment afterward another shell took the same route. The general, instead of smiling this time, turned to his aid and said, "Major, I think we had better retire a little," and fell back a few yards to a small wood. On the night after this battle, and when the troops had retired to Rossville, General Thomas was asked by Colonel B. F. Scribner to take a cup of coffee at his camp-fire, and did so. Scribner had been slightly wounded in the head, and the clotted blood still stood upon his face, left there in order to prevent the wound from continuing to bleed. Thomas sat down by Scribner, drank his coffee, saw the wound of Scribner, talked of commonplace matters for half an hour, but never by word or act alluded in the slightest way to the fact that he had just fought one of the most important battles of the war, and saved the army from annihilation. No one could have known from Thomas's remarks that a battle had been raging, or that his host had been wounded.