ced their final retreat towards Richmond,
having received at last a satisfactory taste of the quality yet
remaining in the outnumbered, harrassed, but never-discouraged and
ever-dangerous Army of the Potomac.

Owing to the fact that this battle was so largely an artillery-duel, as
has before been remarked, the opportunities for the display or
observation of personal bravery were comparatively limited, and mostly
confined to a short period towards the close of the battle. That the
Union troops would have shown the same personal dash and daring
throughout, had the plan of the General in command made hand-to-hand
fighting advisable--was fully proved by the short conflict which closed
the day. In that short period occupied by the advance of the two wings
and afterwards of the main body, two or three incidents occurred, which
some of the combatants will yet remember when their attention is thus
called to them, and without which this battle-picture, necessarily very
defective, and aiming much more at truth than sensation, would be found
almost destitute of details.

In the first advance, no less than three color-bearers, carrying the
same flag of one of the regiments of Meagher's Irish brigade, were shot
down within less than five minutes. When the third fell, a Lieutenant in
the color-company of the same regiment, who had not many months before
deserted the mock combats of the stage for the sanguinary fights of
actual warfare, concluded to try _his_ success at carrying the dangerous
bunting. He seized the staff and held it, himself untouched, for several
minutes, while bullets were actually riddling the flag. At the end of
that time a stalwart Irishman, finding his rifle-barrel heated and the
ramrod jammed in attempting to load, made two or three ineffectual jerks
at the rod, found that it was impossible to remove it; then grasped the
weapon by the muzzle, whirled it half a dozen times around his head,
bringing the butt down in each instance with crushing force, on the head
of a foe; and finally, giving it another and longer whirl, with a wild
"Whooruh!" that might have originated among the bogs of Connaught, sent
it whirling among the enemy with such force that it literally plowed its
way through them and left a perceptible track of fallen foemen. "Be the
Hill of Howth!" roared Paddy, when he had completed this exploit. "It's
meself hasn't the bit of a muskit left to fight wid at all at all! Here,
Captain!" to the Lieutena