Thus early in the engagement a bloodthirsty Confederacy had succeeded in training a fowling-piece from behind a chimney on the roof of Paris, greatly worrying our troops with dried beans, and the Orange County Howitzers were already concentrated upon him with a view to cutting off his legs; when there suddenly appeared within our lines a maiden, stricken in years, with a white plush bonnet, a green silk umbrella, and the ninety-ninth number of the History of this War under one arm. She waved a hand toward the Mackerels nearest her, and says she: "On, to Paris! On, to Paris! or a decimated and indignant country, acting on the predictions in the ninety-ninth number of the most accurate History of the War now sold to subscribers only, will indignantly demand that EVERYBODY be at once removed!" Here the General of the Mackerel Brigade made his appearance from the rear, and says he: "What do you desire, Miss P. Hen?" "On, to Paris!" shrieked the maiden. "On, to the capital of the brutalized dealers in human flesh and blood, and drag them to the scaffold!" Here Miss P. Hen drew a long breath, and says she, "Let's have no vacillating." "All right, Mamsell," says the General. "And the country'd have more confidence in _you_," says Miss P. Hen, vigorously, "if you'd stop chewing that nasty tobacco, which is only fit for brutes and dealers in human flesh and blood. On, to Paris! or"-- At this juncture, my boy, the aged Miriam caught sight of the Conservative Kentucky Chap, haranguing against her down the Accomac road, and toddled furiously away to chastise him with her umbrella. Meanwhile, the Orange County Howitzers had sent some pounds of shrapnel in the direction of the hostile Confederacy on the roof; and as the bricks began to fly from the chimney, and the dried beans came at longer intervals, Regiment 5 of the Mackerel Brigade moved nearer to the beleaguered capital, and opened an effective fire of musketry upon the azure zenith. Captain Villiam Brown was about to order an assault, when certain windows in the upper stories of Paris were thrown up, and there rained therefrom such a hurtling tempest of stew-pans, hearth-brushes, shaving-cups, and boxes of blacking, that hundreds of Mackerel spectacles were broken. Simultaneously the sanguinary Confederacy on the roof put a double charge of dried beans through the coat-tails of Captain Bob Shorty, and our troops--"the object of the reconnoissance being fully accomplished"--withdrew in good order to their former position. Quickly, thereupon, appeared a canvas banner from the garret windows of Paris, inscribed: "Chalk up the First Round for the Southern Confederacy!" and the first day's fight was over.