were ordered forward to support a battery. As we lay there behind the hill on which the battery was located, I had an interesting adventure. A shell fired at the battery on the hill in front of us struck the ground, bounded and struck the ground just back of me, I being seated on my knapsack facing the rear; it plowed a hole under me from back to front and came out between my feet. The ground settled down into the trench, my knapsack and I going down with it. Well, that shell was given room as quickly as possible. I rolled over three or four times and the other boys who were sitting near did the same, but fortunately it did not burst and no one got more than a good start. A little later my brother Vertulan, assistant surgeon of the 19th Massachusetts Regiment, gave me a call. About noon we were ordered in to take the Stone Bridge. Other troops had been hammering away at it for some hours but without success. We were moved down toward the river and opened fire on the Johnnies across a narrow valley on the other side. As we moved forward we came in sight of the bridge and the stream just below us. We stayed there in the open on the side hill sloping down toward the river quite a while, firing away. After a while we saw the fire of the Johnnies was slackening. Then we heard some troops down to our left cheering. From their position they could see the Johnnies were retreating better than we could. But as soon as we saw they were starting, we started too, and being much nearer we were easily the first to reach it. We crossed the bridge, turned to the right and marched up a little way and halted to wait for ammunition, we having only a few rounds left. For a while troops came across the bridge and poured past us by the thousand. After a while we moved up on to the high ground opposite the bridge. A dead Johnny, a sergeant was lying there on the ground. Harry Aldrich turned him over and got his portemonnaie out of his pocket. He opened it and found done up in a little piece of paper a number of five dollar gold pieces. A little later I came upon a man lying dead holding in his hand a photograph of a group of children. He had evidently found himself mortally wounded, had thought of his family at home and had taken that picture from his pocket to take a last look at the likeness of those he loved so dearly and had died with the picture in his hand. Toward night we advanced toward Sharpsburg and took a position on the brow of a ridge facing the high hill where Lee had his reserve artillery massed, and there we stayed until well into the evening. We soon fired away all but one of our cartridges, retaining that one against an emergency. The Confederate infantry was behind a stone wall part way down the hill from the artillery. One of the Johnnies killed behind that wall had my knapsack on his back. He had found it in the little grove beside the road near the Henry House Hill on the Bull Run battlefield, and carried it into Maryland.