The prisoners were taken back two or three miles, and there by order of General Powell, then commanding Averill’s old brigade, shot in cold blood, denying them the poor privilege of writing to their friends, though Hartigan, particularly, who had a young and lovely wife, earnestly entreated with his last breath to be allowed to send her a message. These facts were all carefully traced out, and verified by the statement of the citizen at whose house the two men were first attacked, and near which they fought and were captured; by the statement of the citizen, some two miles to the rear, near whose house they were buried, not by the assassins, but by the pitying farmer; and by the evidence rendered by the opened graves of the poor murdered men. From that time, General Powell’s name was familiar to the ears and memories of the First Maryland cavalry, and many were the vows there uttered over the dead bodies of their comrades to avenge their death—and they were fearfully avenged, though the chief assassin escaped. In November, 1864, the battalion, now in General Davidson’s brigade of Lomax’s division, crossed the mountain and camped near Washington, in Rappahannock county, in order to obtain supplies, which were now exceedingly scarce. For days at a time the only food was apples and bread made of corn meal of such miserable quality as to be utterly inedible except under pressure of the direst necessity. Coffee and sugar had long before disappeared—so long that it was a real effort of memory to recall their flavor—and the taste of meat was now a matter of rare occurrence, and then often obtained by the capture of a bewildered squirrel or rabbit, or the _accidental falling of a tree_ on some luckless hog, which happened oftener than people would suppose or believe who are unacquainted with the pertinacity with which that animal will haunt a cavalry camp to steal from the horses, and at which they have often been known to be killed by a _kick_. Apples were, however, in abundance, and excellent, and assisted greatly in keeping up the commissariat. Supplies of all kinds, however, were exhausted in two or three weeks, and the battalion moved back to the neighborhood of Madison Court House. Here it remained until December, when General Davidson was relieved by General Jackson, the former General having been only temporarily in command during the absence, while wounded, of the latter, the proper commander of the brigade.