When he reached the place indicated he learned of Jack’s detail to the extreme right of the army.  He dared not set out openly to follow.  He ran back in the bushes, out of sight, and then by a detour struck the stream far above to the right.  The volleys away to the west guided him, and he tore forward, bruising his flesh and tearing his raiment to tatters.  The stream seemed too deep to cross, for a mile or more, but finally, finding that the firing seemed to go swiftly to the southward, he plunged in.  The banks on the other side were rugged and precipitous, and he was obliged to push on in the morass that the stream wound through.  But nature gave out, and on a sunny slope he sat down to rest.  He soon fell into a sound sleep, and when he woke there was noise of men laughing and shouting about him.  He started to his feet.

“Hello! buster,” a voice said near him.  “What are you doin’ away from yer mammy?  Beckon she’ll think the Yanks have got you if you ain’t home for bedtime.”

The man who said this was lying peacefully under a laurel-bush.  Others were sprawled about, feasting on the spoil of Union haversacks.

“I knew then that I was in a rebel camp,” Dick continued, “but I wasn’t afraid, because my clothes were not military; and, even if they had been, they were so torn and muddy, no one would have thought of them as a uniform.  But, for that matter, a good many of the rebels had blue trousers; and, as for regimentals, there really were none, as we have them.  I made believe that I lived in the neighborhood, imitated the Southern twang, and was set to work right away helping the company cook.  The firing was still going on very near us, to the south, west, and east.  But the men didn’t seem to mind it much.  In about a half-hour there was a sudden move.

“A volley was poured into us from the east, and in an instant all the graybacks were in commotion.  I heard the officers shout:  ’We are surrounded!  Die at your post, men!’ But the men didn’t want to die at their posts, or anywhere else, but made off like frightened rabbits.  In a few minutes we were all marching between two lines of Richardson’s Union brigade.  I had no trouble in stepping out, and then I pushed on in Jack’s direction.  But I could not find him when I got to Hunter’s headquarters.  An orderly remembered seeing him, or rather seeing the men that brought the good news that Sherman was on the rebel side of the stone bridge early in the battle.  There I found an orderly of Franklin’s, who had seen two men I described, sent off to the right to picket, until the cavalry could be sent there.  I came upon Nick Marsh near the general’s headquarters, and he told me the direction the others had gone, but urged me to remain with him—­as Jack would surely be back there, horsemen having ridden out in that direction to relieve him.  I don’t know how far I went, but it must have been a mile.