him on the left. He came, and I explained the trouble. The
lieutenant did not know what to do. This gentleman was a valuable
officer in the line, but was out of place in the battalion. He asked me
what ought to be done. I replied that we must not fail to connect, else
there would be a gap in the line, and how wide a gap nobody could tell.
If I had known then what I know now, I should have told him to report
the condition to Colonel Perrin, who was in command of the brigade, but
I did otherwise; I told him that if he would remain on the left, I would
hunt for the picket-line. He consented.

I first went to the left very far, and then to the rear and searched a
long time, but found nobody. I returned to the left of Company A and
proposed to go forward through the wheat and hunt for our pickets. The
lieutenant approved.

The word was passed down the line that I was going to the front. I moved
slowly up the hill through the wheat. There was a moon, over which
bunches of cloud passed rapidly. While the moon would be hidden I went
forward. When the cloud had passed, I stooped and looked. Here and there
in the wheat lay dead skirmishers, and guns, and many signs of battle.
The wheat had been trodden down.

Cautiously I moved on until I was a hundred yards in advance of the
battalion. I saw no picket. Here the wheat was standing, in most places
untrodden. I looked back down the hill; I could not see our own men. I
went forward again for forty yards. Now at my right I saw a fence, or
rather a line of bushes and briers which had grown up where a fence had
been in years past. This fence-row stretched straight up the hill toward
the cemetery. I went to it. It would serve my purpose thoroughly. In the
shelter of this friendly row of bushes I crept slowly up the hill. I was
now in front of Company A's right.

The moon shone out and then was hidden. I was two hundred yards in
advance of the battalion. I laid my gun on the ground and crawled along
the fence-row for fifty yards, at every instant pausing and looking. I
reached a denser and taller clump of bushes, and raised myself to my
full height. In front were black spots in the wheat--five paces apart---
a picket-line--whose?

The spots looked very black. Gray would look black in this wheat with
the moonlight on it. I turned my belt-buckle behind my back, lest the
metal should shine. The line of spots was directly in front of me, and
on both sides of the fence-row. The line seem