One day while here the Yankees came out from Suffolk in force, drove in the pickets, and placed a battery in position in sight of the breastworks 800 yards away, and opened fire. The works were at once manned, and two batteries vigorously returned the fire of the enemy. All were expecting an attack on the breastworks and were prepared to meet it, but it did not come. It was not long before a shell from one of the Confederate guns struck and exploded an ammunition chest of a Yankee gun, at which a wild cheer went up from the Confederate lines, whereupon the Yankees broke and ran for dear life, leaving a disabled limber and one or more dead men on the ground. The captain of our battery had measured the distance from the breastworks to the point where the Yankees planted their battery, and knew exactly how to cut the fuse to do effective work. A Yankee detail returned the next day under flag of truce to get their dead, and said, "When you fellows raised that yell, we thought you were charging us, and we decamped in short order." The "Rebel yell" had terrified them again. Another day, when Company C and Company D were on picket, the Yankees came out again. We could see the skirmishers deploying across an open field half a mile or more to the front, while their main body marched along the outside of the road fence in columns of fours, partially hid by trees and bushes. On they came, nearer and nearer, until the skirmishers reached a fence running parallel with our line some distance in front, rather out of range of our guns; here they halted and commenced shooting at long range. Expecting the main body to advance and attempt to drive us back from the picket line, we occupied the rifle-pits, and Captain Houston and myself tried to restrain the men from returning the fire until the enemy was in good range, but when the balls would come whizzing by, whacking the trees behind us, some of the men would crack away now and then in spite of us, but did not hit any of the Yankees. While this was going on, a black smoke burst forth from a large dwelling-house about 150 yards in our front, on the right of the road, the inmates, women and children, running and screaming from the burning house. The vandals had set fire to that house and burned it with all its contents, leaving those women and children homeless and helpless, only, as they said, because some of the Confederate pickets had been going there and getting something to eat. The miscreants left when the flames enveloped the house.