op in the line in which
Lee's army lay stretched across "the Wilderness" country to stop him.
The day, though early in May, was a hot one, and the old battery, like
most others, had suffered fearfully. Two of the guns had had wheels cut
down by shells and the men had been badly cut up; but the fortune of the
day had been with Lee, and a little before nightfall, after a terrible
fight, there was a rapid advance, Lee's infantry sweeping everything
before it, and the artillery, after opening the way for the charge,
pushing along with it; now unlimbering as some vantage-ground was
gained, and using canister with deadly effect; now driving ahead again
so rapidly that it was mixed up with the muskets when the long line
of breastworks was carried with a rush, and a line of guns were caught
still hot from their rapid work. As the old battery, with lathered
horses and smoke-grimed men, swung up the crest and unlimbered on the
captured breastwork, a cheer went up which was heard even above the long
general yell of the advancing line, and for a moment half the men in the
battery crowded together around some object on the edge of the redoubt,
yelling like madmen. The next instant they divided, and there was the
Cat, smoke-grimed and blood-stained and still sweating hot from her last
fire, being dragged from her muddy ditch by as many men as could get
hold of trail-rope or wheel, and rushed into her old place beside the
Eagle, in time to be double-shotted with canister to the muzzle, and
to pour it from among her old comrades into her now retiring former
masters. Still, she had a new carriage, and her record was lost, while
those of the other guns had been faithfully kept by the men. This made a
difference in her position for which even the bullets in her wheels
did not wholly atone; even Harris, the sergeant of her detachment, felt
that.

It was only a few days later, however, that abundant atonement was
made. The new general did not retire across the Rapidan after his first
defeat, and a new battle had to be fought: a battle, if anything, more
furious, more terrible than the first, when the dead filled the trenches
and covered the fields. He simply marched by the left flank, and Lee
marching by the right flank to head him, flung himself upon him again
at Spottsylvania Court-House. That day the Cat, standing in her place
behind the new and temporary breastwork thrown up when the battery was
posted, had the felloes of her wheels, wh