We lay guarding the approach to the Ferry; and soon the Veterans from the Army of the Potomac began to file past. At this the battery of twenty pounders on Lookout opened fire and rained their misshapen fragments of iron around us in a very intrusive manner. To be sure they were aimed at Hooker’s men, and not at us, who were lying down; and if any of us were hit it should not count. But unfortunately it did count with fatal effect to many a brave comrade. The only sort of protection in our line was a large white-oak tree, some distance to the right of our company, and I viewed with envy two soldiers sitting on the safe side of that tree. I very soon ceased to grudge them the position; for a shell burst close beside them, a piece struck a gun, drove the breech pin through the knee of one of them, and sent the naked barrel humming over our heads. A large fragment struck the other man, tearing his arm off at the shoulder, causing his death in about twenty minutes. I was again reminded that there is no safe place in a battle. Presence of mind is not so good as absence of body. This movement brought us full rations whereat we greatly rejoiced. We returned to our old quarters on Moccasin Point, and my bunk mate and I slept for the second night in a house that we had just spent a month in building. It consisted of pine poles driven into the ground to form a stockade pen about six feet square, thatched with pine-feathers. A luxurious bed of poles attached to the wall, padded with a feather bed--(pine-feathers). A regular stone fire-place, with mud and stick chimney. The roof consisted of the two sections of a dog tent. Our kit of tools was composed of a hatchet, that wasn’t sharp from one nick to another. I hope I shall have your sympathy when I say, that we were ordered down the river next day and never saw that dandy soldiers’ rest again. We next went into camp in Nickajack Cove--about two miles south of Shell-Mound, a station on the Nashville & Chattanooga Rail Road, where we built log cabins and again prepared our winter quarters. Not far from this camp are several large caves. One is known as Murrell’s cave, supposed to have been one of the hiding places of the celebrated “Land Pirate,” John A. Murrell, who for years scourged this part of Tennessee.