Upon the third day the sun rose bright and warm upon the bleached forms of the dead strewn over the sanguinary field; upon the wounded, and upon long, glistening lines of armed men ready to renew the conflict. Each antagonist, rousing every element of power, seemed resolved upon victory or death. Finally victory saluted the Union banners, and with great loss the rebel army sounded the retreat. "Thus," says Glazier in his "Battles for the Union"--"the Battle of Gettysburg ended--the bloody turning-point of the rebellion--the bloody baptism of the redeemed republic. Nearly twenty thousand men from the Union ranks had been killed and wounded, and a larger number of the rebels, making the enormous aggregate of at least forty thousand, whose blood was shed to fertilize the Tree of Liberty." During this sanguinary battle; the cavalry were in daily and hourly conflict with the enemy's well-trained horse under their respective dashing leaders. The sabre was no "useless ornament," but a deadly weapon, and "dead cavalrymen" and their dead chargers, were sufficiently numerous to have drawn forth an exclamation of approval from even so exacting a commander as "Fighting Joe Hooker." Haggerstown, Boonsboro', Williamsport and Falling Waters, all attested the great efficiency of the cavalry arm, and at the end of the month it was an assured, confident and capable body of dragoons, that, according to Captain Glazier, "crossed the Rapidan for, as they believed, the purpose of a continued advance movement against the enemy." And here, parenthetically, we may observe, that he, and other recent writers (Mr. Lossing being an exception), are scarcely accurate in so designating the river crossed by them as the Rapidan. It was the _chief tributary of the Rappahannock_, while two sister streams, which together form the Pamunkey, are known to local topography as the North and South Rapid Anna rivers. It was a pleasant locality, and the "Harris Light" encamped there for several weeks, having no occupation more exciting or belligerent than picket duty. Duties of a more stirring character, were, however, awaiting them, and as these are intimately associated with the career of the subject of this biography, the delineation of whose life is the purpose of the writer, we will give them something more than a cursory notice. We will first, however, take the opportunity of introducing a letter from our young cavalryman to his parents, illustrative in some measure of his intelligence and soldierly qualities, while it is no less so of his sense of filial duty: Headquarters Harris Lgt. Cavalry, Near Hartwood Church, Virginia, _August 22d, 1863_. Dear Father and Mother: