triangles, their combinations and figures in numberless variety, as they were waved up and down and to and fro in rapid, ever-shifting pantomime? The steep bank was covered with a swaying, restless mass of blue-uniformed men, too distant to be distinctly discriminated, yet certainly numbering thousands. 'Reserves!' a dozen voices cried at once, and the next moment came the wonder that our march had been so hurried, when whole brigades, as it seemed, could thus be held in idle waiting. We were soon undeceived. Out into the cornfield filed the column, up the river, and nearly parallel to it, halting a little below the upper one of the two principal landings. Here there was a further delaying for ferriage. 'Stack arms; every man fill his canteen, then come right back to the ranks!' Not to the Tennessee for water--there was no time to go so far--but close at hand, at a pond, or little bayou of the river; and, returning to the line of stacks, a few more long, unquiet minutes in waiting, speculation, and eager gazing toward the battle. And then we saw what was that dark, turbulent multitude over the river: oh, shame! a confused rabble, composed chiefly of men whose places were rightly on the field, but who had turned and fled away from the fight to seek safety under the coverture of that bluff. Forward again, and the regiment moved, with frequent little aggravating halts, up to the point on the river where the Thirty-sixth Indiana had already embarked, and were now being ferried over. The Twenty-fourth Ohio crossed at the lower landing. There were a number of country folk here, clad in the coarse, rusty homespun common in the South, whose intense anxiety to see every movement visible on the farther side of the river kept them unquietly shifting their positions continually. One of these worthies was hailed from our company: 'Say, old fellow! how's the fight going on over there?' He was an old and somewhat diminutive specimen, grizzle haired, and stoop shouldered, but yellow and withered from the effects of sun and tobacco rather than the burden of years. For a moment he hesitated, as though guarding his reply, and then, with a sidelong glance of the eyes, answered slowly: 'Well, it aren't hardly decided yet, I reckon; but they're a drivin' your folks--some.' Evidently he believed that our army had been badly beaten. The emphatic rejoinder, 'D--d old secesh!' was the sole thanks his information brought him: the characterization, aside from the accented epithet, was doubtless a just one, but for all that his words were in no wise encouraging. A minute later we passed a sergeant, whose uniform and bright-red chevrons showed that he was attached to some volunteer battery. He was mounted upon a large, powerful horse, and seemed a man of considerable ability. 'Do the rebels fight well over there?' demanded a voice from the column a half dozen files ahead of me.