orders. The Rebs made tracks for a low piece of ground
behind a ridge, and then formed line of battle. Our men, with a yell,
went forward, and when they saw the Rebs in line, these two Colonels,
thinking they had been sent out to fight, and that their men didn't
carry guns for nothing, ordered them to fire; and then they ordered them
to load again, in order to relave their hips as much as possible from
the load of ammunition; and then they fired again; and then, gittin'
excited, and thinkin' this work too slow, and that it wouldn't do to
take such bright bayonets home, they ordered a charge, and cheering,
yelling, and howling, our boys went at the Rebs. The Rebs didn't stand
to meet them, but fell back behind a barn. The batteries burned
that,--and then they tried to form line again, but no use. As soon as
our fellows gave the yell, they were off like all possessed. They had
prepared to run by tearing the fences down; and then it was trying to
form line, and breaking as soon as our fellows howled a little, all the
way for five long miles to Martinsburg; and the last our boys saw of the
Rebs was their straight coat-tails at the south end of the town. And
that was the whole battle of Falling Waters; and may be Ould Patterson
wouldn't have got to Martinsburg if them Colonels had reported the Rebs
in force, and not got excited.

"But how did you hear all this? You forget that part of it."

"And couldn't you let that go? I thought I could concale that.

"Well, you know, Lieutenant, our ould Colonel boarded at the Brick
Hotel, along the Railroad, above where the long strings of locomotives
were burned, as the Gineral says, by our 'misguided southern friends;'
and I was about there considerably on duty. One afternoon, a
jolly-looking little chap, one of the Wisconsin boys, and one after my
own heart--and he proved it, too, by trating me to several drinks--came
along with a Rebel Artillery officer's coat under his arm. And we looked
at the coat, and talked and drank, and drank and talked, until the
Wisconsin chappy put it on, just to show me how the Rebel officer looked
in it. It was a fine grey, trimmed with gold lace and scarlet, and the
Wisconsin chappy looked gay in it, barring the sleeves were several
inches too long, and the waist buttons came down nearly a foot too far,
and it was too big round the waist. And he showed me after every drink
what he did and what the Officer did,--and, to tell the plain truth, we
got a d