n joyous assurance he opened the
small missive and bent his eyes upon its first lines.

As he did so a hostile shell, first that had ever come so near, burst
just in front of his guns. A big lump of metal struck one of them on the
chase, glanced, clipped off half the low top of his forage-cap and
struck in the trunk of an oak behind him, and as his good horse flinched
and quivered he looked unwillingly from the page toward a puff of white
smoke on a distant hill, and with a broad smile said--a mere nonsense
word; but the humor of such things has an absurd valuation and
persistency in camps, and for months afterward, "Ah-r?--indeed!" was
the battery's gay response to every startling sound. He had luck in
catchwords, this Hilary. He fought the scrimmage through with those
unread pages folded slim between a thumb and forefinger, often using
them to point out things, and when after it he had reopened them and
read them through--and through again--to their dizzying close, the
battery surgeon came murmuring privately--

"Cap, what's wrong; bad news?"

"Oh!" said Hilary, looking up from a third reading, "what, this? No-o!
nothing wrong in this. I was wrong. I'm all right now."

"No, you're not, Captain. You come along now and lie down. The windage
of that chunk of iron has--"

"Why, Doc, I shouldn't wonder! If you'll just keep everybody away from
me awhile, yourself included, I will lie down," said the unnerved
commander, and presently, alone and supine, softly asked himself with
grim humor, "Which chunk of iron?"

The actual text of Anna's chunk was never divulged, even to Flora. We do
not need it. Neither did Flora. One of its later effects was to give the
slender correspondence which crawled after it much more historical value
to the battery and the battery's beloved home city than otherwise it
might have had. From Virginia it told spiritedly of men, policies, and
movements; sketched cabinet officers, the president, and the great
leaders and subleaders in the field--Stuart, Gordon, Fitzhugh Lee. It
gave droll, picturesque accounts of the artillerist's daily life; of the
hard, scant fare and the lucky feast now and then on a rabbit or a
squirrel, turtles' eggs, or wild strawberries. It depicted moonlight
rides to dance with Shenandoah girls; the playing of camp charades; and
the singing of war, home, and love songs around the late camp fire,
timed to the antic banjo or the sentimental guitar. Drolly, yet with
tenderne