y be useful to us, Artie."

"Yes, sir, especially as the wind is blowing from the northeast," went
on the captain. "Tar, you know, makes a good, thick smoke."

The colonel stared for an instant, then a smile came into his face.

"Artie, I see you are bound to be a general like Deck. Your plan is to
smoke the enemy out."

"I only mentioned what we had found, and how the wind was blowing," was
the modest return.

"It amounts to the same thing. You can light that barrel, and roll it as
close up to the enemy as you dare. I will send the third battalion
around to the lower end of the trestle. Send Major Belthorpe to me."

Artie retired, and presently Tom Belthorpe came dashing up. He was told
to keep a strict watch through the smoke for the enemy, should they turn
up the tracks. Then Colonel Lyon galloped off with the third battalion
in the opposite direction.

It was not long before the tar barrel was blazing merrily, and to add to
the smoke some of the soldiers threw on a mass of dead and wet brush.
The dense cloud rolled upward, and the wind carried it directly to the
spot where the Confederates were located. In the midst of the smoke the
barrel was rolled closer, until it set fire to the northeast end of the
trestle.

Blinded and choked, the Confederates fired several volleys at random,
and were then compelled to seek some spot where a breath of pure air
might be obtained. Some ran up the tracks and some down, and these
engaged the second and the third battalions. A few, risking life and
limb, leaped from the trestle through the advancing fire beneath; but
these were captured by Major Deck's command, each man being fully
covered as he landed.

To Life Knox's gallant seventh company fell the lot of resisting the
majority of those who had defended the trestle, and a desperate conflict
took place in a small hollow at a second trestle above the first. The
Confederate company was scarcely drilled, yet each man knew how to
shoot, and when surrounded the fellows discarded their arms, and used
their fists and such clubs as they had picked up on the railroad. As one
Irishman in the seventh company declared afterward, "It was the most
delightful Donnybrook fair he had seen since lavin' the ould country!" A
private of Kentuckian blood declared, "They didn't know enough as
soldiers to surrender, but jest fit, an' fit, an' fit!" This pitched
battle was laughed over for many a day afterward. In the end, however,
every Confe