a small bush in my front, threw the splinters in my face, and whistled over my shoulder. I may say that I was startled, but I kept loading and firing without any idea whatever as to what I was firing at. Soon the dry leaves, which covered the ground about us, were on fire, and the smoke from them added to the general obscurity. Two or three men had fallen in my vicinity. At this moment the young lieutenant who had my descriptive list in his coat bosom, and who was gallantly waving his sword in the front, was struck by a bullet and fell instantly dead, almost at my feet. Then it was that I realized my utter isolation and shuddered at the thought of a fate impending—“_Dead and unknown._” By this time the fire from the enemy in our front—it was the division of General Hardee turning the flank of the Federal position—became so terrible that we were driven back into the ravine. Here we were comparatively safe. We could load our pieces, crawl up the bank of the ravine, fire and fall back, as it were. But many poor fellows who crawled up this friendly embankment fell back dead or wounded; and in one instance, as I crouched down loading my piece, a man who had been struck above me, fell on top of me and died by my side. It was here, in this terrible moment, that I, boylike, thought of the peaceful Ohio home, where a loving, anxious mother was doubtless thinking of me, and with the thought that perhaps my father had been killed, came a natural desire to be well out of the scrape. Notwithstanding, I kept firing as long as my cartridges lasted. These gone, a fierce sergeant, with a revolver in his hand, placed its muzzle close to my ear and fiercely demanded why I was not fighting. I told him that I had no cartridges. “Take cartridges from the box of the man there,” he said, pointing to the dead man who had just fallen upon me. Mine was an Enfield rifle, and my deceased neighbor’s cartridges were for a Springfield rifle. I had clung to this beautiful Enfield, with its maple stock, which my father had selected, and I was determined that it should not leave my hands. While this scene was passing, the enemy came upon us full charge, and, looking up through the smoke of the burning leaves and beyond a washout which connected with our ravine, I saw their gray, dirty uniforms. I heard their fierce yells, I saw their flag flapping sullenly in the grimy atmosphere. That was a sight which I have never forgotten; I can see the tiger ferocity in those faces yet; I can see them in my dreams. For what might they not have appeared to me, terrified boy that I was!