d a short distance, Sergeant
Griswold came up and reported to Kilpatrick in my hearing that the enemy
were advancing their lines, that our wounded were being captured, and
that Lieutenant Compton of my company had been killed, and he showed
where a bullet had passed through the collar of his coat as he wheeled
when asked to surrender. Kilpatrick called for somebody to go with him
as an orderly, as he wanted to find General Bayard and General McDowell.
This I did, holding his horse while he was in conference with these
generals that night.

The next morning we recovered the body of Lieutenant Compton, of whom we
were very fond, and we succeeded in making a coffin out of three
cracker-boxes from which we took out the ends; wrapping him in a blanket
we buried him in this cracker-box coffin at the corner of the old stone
house on the Centerville Pike. His friends subsequently recovered his
remains. We all felt rather blue over the loss of comrades in the affair
of the night before, which had seemed to us so needless.

Among the pathetic incidents of that morning was one which indicated the
unselfish heroism of a young soldier. Early in the day some of our men
were looking over the battlefield of the night before for missing
comrades, and one, I remember, spoke of having found a young boy,
apparently not over eighteen years of age, lying with his shattered leg
in a pool of blood. My comrade spoke to him saying, "I will go and get
somebody to help carry you off," whereupon, the wounded boy faintly
remarked: "I do not think you can do me any good, but during the night I
heard groans coming from over the hill yonder, and I think if you go
there you may be able to save some one; but if you will give me a drink
of water I will be much obliged." The man gave his canteen to the
wounded boy and started off for help. On his return he found the boy,
with the canteen clasped in his hands, dead.

During the morning the armies were getting in position for the final
struggle of the afternoon of that day, which, I think, was the
thirty-first of August. Our regiment was lying in column of fours
awaiting orders. That afternoon, with a view to saving our horses from
the effect of shells dropping near us, Kilpatrick got permission to move
the column to the right a little, so as to be out of range. While we
were making this movement he happened to be riding alongside of me, I
being in the ranks, when a staff-officer approached and greeted him