OUR OWN TROOPS--A FIGHT WITH NORTH CAROLINA
TROOPS--MRS. MODLIN TURNS A BACK SOMERSAULT--OUR IRISH LIEUTENANT.

While at Plymouth on detached service, with "I" and "F" troops, we were in
the habit of scouting ten to fifteen miles once or twice a week, sometimes
in one direction and sometimes in another. We were seldom ordered out on a
scout by General Wessels, but all that was necessary for us to do when
going out on one of these scouts, was to notify the General of the fact
that we were going out on a certain road, ten or fifteen miles, at a
certain time, and would be back about such a time.

I have frequently taken twenty-five or thirty men for a scout into the
country, to capture parties with loads of provisions for the Confederates,
or to bring in some prisoners.

I have mentioned two guides, Modlin and Wynn, who were in the habit of
going with me on these raids, and who were both taken prisoners at
Plymouth, and escaped into the woods while on the march, after being
spotted by some of the North Carolina troops as "Buffaloes."

These two guides, who were natives of North Carolina, and who knew every
turpentine path through those immense pine forests, and who had friends
outside our lines who kept them well posted on what was going on outside,
while they in turn kept me posted as to the movements of the rebs.

One day Wynn came to me and said that he had positive information that
five or six loads of bacon, for the Confederate army, would stop over
night at a certain house about fifteen miles south of Plymouth, on the
Washington road, and that the guard would consist of ten men besides the
teamsters. I immediately rode up to General Wessel's headquarters and told
him that I was going to take thirty men and go out on the Washington road
at five o'clock that afternoon, and would return the next morning. I, as
usual, procured the countersign for that night, so as to be able to get
inside the picket post if I should come back in the night, and selecting
thirty men, started at five p. m., guided by Wynn for the South.

After getting out about five miles, we left the road and followed one of
the turpentine paths through the woods in a parallel direction.

It had become quite dark by this time and we proceeded in single file,
Wynn and myself riding at the head of the column.

Among the men under my command that night was Sergeant C----, a tall,
powerful man, and an excellent soldier, whose pluck could always be reli