Months go by. The Tullahoma campaign has been fought to a finish. On ostensible recruiting service, but really for participation in the momentous Brough-Vallandigham campaign in Ohio, the opportunity is afforded me to go home for a brief season. I avail myself of it, and take proudly home to show to friends the gift of comrades beloved. The duty in the north performed, I turn south to rejoin the command. The military situation is most interesting. Like the sharp end of a lance, the western army has pierced into the very vitals of the Confederacy. Rosecrans has won his objective, Chattanooga; paying therefor the bloody penalty of Chickamauga, but is practically besieged by an enemy whose camp fires light the many miles of horizon, from where the crouching lion of lofty Lookout Mountain, with extended paws, touches the Tennessee, around the semi-circle of frowning ridges to where the strongly intrenched line again touches the deep flowing river at Tunnel Hill. He is relieved from command by the powers that be, and Thomas, the reliable, the Rock of Chickamauga, beloved of all men, takes his place as chief. He declares his intention to hold his great strategic position “until we starve,” and unless help comes, starvation seems probable. [Illustration: GENERAL GEORGE H. THOMAS “The Rock of Chickamauga.”] Hooker is on his way from the east with two corps of veterans of the Potomac, and Sherman marches to us with the victorious columns, flushed with the capture of Vicksburg, from the banks of the Mississippi. The great Captain, with the fame of Fort Donelson and Shiloh, comes also, to assume supreme command. Grant! Sherman! Thomas! Behold the triumvirate! Truly, the great game of war is now to be played by experts. I hasten to take place as one of the pawns. SCENE III. THE CAPTURE. Where the fight was the fiercest at Stone’s River, Captain Keel, of ours, in gallant leadership of his company, was shot in the elbow of his right arm. Surgical skill had prevented amputation and obtained exsection, resulting in a cartilaginous elbow and sorely crippled hand. Thus maimed, he came to me at Nashville and declared his intention of reporting for duty. Condemning his judgment, but admiring his pluck, I said, “All right, Captain, we will take the first train for the front.” We reached Stevenson, Alabama, the end of our ride over rough and worn pieces of iron, dignified by the name of railroad. From there a mountain wagon road formed the connection with the army at Chattanooga. Its course could be traced by the fragments of broken wagons, abandoned stores, and by the carcasses of the poor mules, strangled in the mud of it. Trains laden with ammunition, food and forage started daily from Stevenson. The time of their arrival, at the end of the pontoon bridge across from Chattanooga was an unknown quantity. It was at least two and more frequently four days.