It was not so late but that the eyes of many little folk I know were then open. Yet with the Tennesseans it is early to bed and early to rise (though truth compels me to add, they are neither healthy, wealthy, nor wise), and every house was as still and dark as though it were midnight. That morning in Paris, I had observed the shutters upon the shops. It puzzled me at first; then I whispered to the sergeant, "Is this Sunday?" and he answered, "I really believe it is." This was indeed Sunday evening! and yet I could hardly bring myself to believe that at the same hour, and while we were passing these lightless houses, whose undisturbed inmates slept, unconscious that their dreaded enemies were passing before their doors, in New York, the evening churches were not yet out, and the great city was probably more wide awake than at any other time of the preceding day. It was a contrast, too, those crowded streets and this lonely road. At last I recognized the houses near the Fork. On the top of the hill, which overlooks the bridge, a cross road runs parallel to the brook. The road then descends the hill, and is earned, upon a long and narrow causeway, to the bridge. A second causeway leads to the opposite bank, and on this bank a timber tobacco-barn commands the road, beyond. We were then within seven miles of Paris, where six hundred of King's cavalry had been but two days before. It was possible they had returned--possible, indeed, that the Memphis railroad had brought up five thousand troops since I left there in the morning. I halted, therefore, a moment for preparation. The fourth (being the last) platoon was ordered to stop at the cross-road, and guard against our being surprised in the rear. With the remaining three I descended the hill. The second and third stayed at the beginning of the causeway, and the first, under command of the second-lieutenant, was ordered to cross the bridge, and take possession of the tobacco-barn on the bank.