The effect was grisly. It struck me that, if they were really coming, some of the rebs then rushing by might take occasion to settle one Yankee "_en passant_": so I got my blouse off, covered myself with dead rebel sergeant's coat, and lay low. A section of artillery extricated itself from the wagons, and wheeled into battery; and, finding myself just in point-blank range, I succeeded by painful endeavor in getting behind a big stump. But, alas! the excitement subsided, the wagons were stopped and ordered back, officers cursed the originators of the panic, and it was all over. But a real charge or a few shots just then would have started "secesh" with a rush, and saved the captain of Company E, Second Massachusetts Volunteers. After awhile, an ambulance came and picked up the last two of us and carried us to where the hospital flies were pitched. My driver, after making sure that nobody heard him, informed me that he had always been for the Union, and voted against "secesh"; "and when they started this war," said he, "I swore they'd have to fight it out without me; but I was wrong there, for they've got me." He drove me up to a fly under which were some dozen or twenty wounded on hospital cots. At first, they said there was no room; but then somebody discovered that his neighbor was dead, and suggested that the Yankee might take his place. So they moved the dead man out under the eaves inside the guys, and gave me the cot. The surgeon examined and bound up my foot, relieving me with the assurance that it would probably stay on, though I should be always lame. The bullet came out of my leg very easily, for, oddly enough, it hadn't pierced my drawers, but had carried them deep into the leg in a sort of bag. A thunder-storm now burst upon us, and with the first gust down came our house, over living and dead. After a long staggering and flapping, they got her set again. The rain thundered on the canvas and cascaded in sheets over the dead man under the eaves, but he was beyond even water cure. The scene was dismal: in the intervals of rain, they took to burying legs and arms upon the hill, and it would not have made a bad slide for a stereoscope, on the whole. But, as night fell, I took my supper with some relish,--a piece of hard-tack and ham, given me by a rebel private on the field,--and with the help of the dead rebel's blanket of last night, which I had sense enough to bag when they picked me up, I slept once more.