other side of the street, but without doing further damage. At
the main road we filed to the right, and amid dashing Staff officers and
orderlies, wounded men and fragments of regiments broken and
disorganized, proceeded on our way to the front. There was a slight
depression in the road, enough to save the troops, and shot and shell
sang harmlessly above our heads. When the head of the column--really its
rear--as we were left in front, was abreast of a swampy strip of meadow
land, at the further end of which was a tannery, our Brigade filed again
to the right. The occupation of this meadow appeared to be criminally
purposeless, as our line of attack was upon the left of the road; while
it was in full view and at the easy range of a few hundred yards from a
three-gun Rebel battery. The men were ordered to lie down, which they
did as best they could from the nature of the ground, while the mounted
officers of the Division and Brigade gathered under the shelter of the
brick tannery building.

The movement was scarcely over, before one head and then another
appeared peering through the embrasures of the earthwork, then a mounted
officer upon a lively sorrel cantered as if for observation a short
distance to the left of the work. Some sharpshooters in our front,
protected slightly by the ground which rose gently towards the west,
tried their breech-loaders upon him. At 450 yards there was certainty
enough in the aim to make the music of their bullets unpleasant, and he
again sought the cover of the work. An upright puff of smoke,--then a
large volumed puff horizontally,--shrill music in its short flight,--a
dull, heavy sound as the shell explodes in the soft earth under our
ranks,--and one man thrown ten feet into the air, fell upon his back in
the ranks behind him, while his two comrades on his left were killed
outright, his Lieutenant near by mortally wounded, a leg of his comrade
on the right cut in two, and a dozen in the neighborhood bespattered
with the soft ground and severely contused. Shells that exploded in the
air above us, or screamed over our heads; rifle balls that whizzed
spitefully near, were now out of consideration. The motions of loading
and firing, and as we were in the line of direction, the shell itself,
could be seen with terrible distinctness. There was the dread certainty
of death at every discharge. All eyes were turned toward the battery,
and at each puff, the "bravest held his breath" until the smo