nd stone walls, where he received two bullets through his breast. It
was reported that night that some of the prisoners we had taken had said
that the old fellow riding at the head of his regiment seemed so brave
they hated to shoot him. This charge, however, routed the enemy, and,
Irwin Gregg having arrived with his remaining regiments, they withdrew.

That night was rather a blue time for us. Lieutenant Whitaker, a fine
officer of my regiment, was among the killed, and the First
Massachusetts cavalry had suffered severely. Our men induced a
wheelwright in the village to work that night making coffins for some of
the officers who had been killed.

On the second day after occurred the fight at Middleburg. On this
occasion Colonel Irwin Gregg's brigade had the advance. The enemy had
been forced back to a strong position on a ridge, their lines occupying
the right and left of the turnpike in the edge of woods covering the
ridge on both sides of the road. On the right, in front of the enemy,
was a cleared field, on the far side of which were also woods in which
Colonel Gregg had two of his regiments, one dismounted, and one mounted
ready to charge at a favorable moment. The Tenth New York cavalry was
down the road in reserve. The enemy's battery was posted on the left of
the pike and on our right as we faced them. Just below this battery, the
ground receding, was a large wheat field and behind a stone wall
parallel to the pike they had a line of dismounted men, their battery
firing into the woods where Colonel Gregg's two regiments were. General
Gregg was with our battery on a ridge some distance back. As the enemy
were making a determined stand General Gregg turned to me and said:
"Ride up to Colonel Gregg, present my compliments, and ask him why he
does not drive those people out of there." As I rode to deliver this
message I wondered how Colonel Gregg would receive it from me, who was
not then a commissioned officer, though he knew me as the General's
clerk.

When I reached the woods in which his command was, I started to ride in,
when an orderly holding a couple of horses called out, "Here, you can't
go mounted through there." Asking him then if Colonel Gregg was in there
he replied that he was, and that he was holding his horse. Leaving my
horse with this man I walked through the woods on the edge of which was
Colonel Gregg's line. He was standing with his shoulder against a tree
at the very front of it. As I approa