Ricketts considers this a perilous job--but proceeds to execute the order as to his own battery. A small ravine is in his front. With Ricketts gallantly leading, the battery dashes across the ravine at full gallop, breaking one wheel as it goes, which is at once replaced. A fence lies across the way. The cannoniers demolish it. The battery ascends the hill near the Henry House, which is full of the Enemy's sharpshooters. [For this, and what immediately follows, see the testimony of Ricketts and others, before the Committee on the Conduct of the War.] Soon as Ricketts gets his guns in battery, his men and horses begin to fall, under the fire of these sharpshooters. He turns his guns upon the Henry House,--and "literally riddles it." Amid the moans of the wounded, the death scream of a woman is heard! The Enemy had permitted her to remain in her doomed house! But the execution is not all on one side, by any means. Ricketts is in a very hot place--the hottest, he afterward declares, that he has ever seen in his life--and he has seen fighting before this. The Enemy is behind the woods, at the front and right of Ricketts's Battery. This, with the added advantage of the natural slope of the ground, enables him to deliver upon the brave Union artillerists a concentrated fire, which is terribly destructive, and disables so many of Rickett's horses that he cannot move, if he would. Rickett's own guns, however, are so admirably served, that a smooth-bore battery of the Enemy, which has been stubbornly opposing him, is driven back, despite its heavy supports. And Griffin's Battery now comes rapidly up into position on the left of, and in line with, Ricketts. For Griffin also has been ordered from the Dogan House hill, to this new, and dangerously exposed, position. But when Major Barry, General McDowell's Chief of Artillery, brings him the order, Griffin hesitates--for he has no Infantry support. "The Fire Zouaves--[The 11th New York]--will support you," says Barry," They are just ready to follow you at the double-quick!" "Then why not let them go and get in position on the hill," says Griffin; "then, let Ricketts's and my batteries come into battery behind; and then, let them (the Zouaves) fall back?" Griffin advises, also, as a better position for his own battery, a hill 500 yards in the rear of the Henry House hill. But advice is thrown away. His artillery-chief is inflexible. "I tell you," says Griffin again, "the Fire Zouaves won't support us." "They will," replies Barry. "At any rate it is General McDowell's order to go there!" That settles the business. "I will go," responds Griffin; "but mark my words, they will not support us!" Griffin's Battery, indeed, starts first, but, owing to the mistake of one of his officers, it has to be countermarched, so that Ricketts's is thrown to the front, and, as we have seen, first reaches the crest of the Henry House hill.