Cautiously I moved on until I was a hundred yards in advance of the battalion.  I saw no picket.  Here the wheat was standing, in most places untrodden.  I looked back down the hill; I could not see our own men.  I went forward again for forty yards.  Now at my right I saw a fence, or rather a line of bushes and briers which had grown up where a fence had been in years past.  This fence-row stretched straight up the hill toward the cemetery.  I went to it.  It would serve my purpose thoroughly.  In the shelter of this friendly row of bushes I crept slowly up the hill.  I was now in front of Company A’s right.

The moon shone out and then was hidden.  I was two hundred yards in advance of the battalion.  I laid my gun on the ground and crawled along the fence-row for fifty yards, at every instant pausing and looking.  I reached a denser and taller clump of bushes, and raised myself to my full height.  In front were black spots in the wheat—­five paces apart—–­ a picket-line—­whose?

The spots looked very black.  Gray would look black in this wheat with the moonlight on it.  I turned my belt-buckle behind my back, lest the metal should shine.  The line of spots was directly in front of me, and on both sides of the fence-row.  The line seemed to stretch across the front of the whole battalion.  If that was our picket, why should there be another in rear of it?  They must be Yankees.

I looked at them for two minutes.  They were still as death.  The line was perfect.  If it was a Confederate line, there might be men nearer to me,—­officers, or men going and returning in its rear,—­but the line seemed straight and perfect.  The spots did not seem tall enough for standing men.  No doubt they were sitting in the wheat with their guns in their laps.  I heard no word—­not a sound except the noises coming from the crest of the hill beyond them, where was the Federal line of battle.  I looked back.  Seminary Ridge seemed very far.  I crawled back to my gun, picked it up, rose, and looked again toward the cemetery.  I could no longer see the spots.  I walked back down the hill, moving off to my right in order to strike the left of Company A. The battalion had not budged.

I reported.  The lieutenant was chagrined.  I told him that I felt almost sure that the men I had seen were Yankees.  What to do?  We ought to have sent a man back to the brigade, but we did not.  Why we did not, I do not know, unless it was that we felt it our duty to solve the difficulty ourselves.  The left of the battalion was unprotected; this would not do.  Something must be done.

I suggested that the left platoon of Company A extend intervals to ten paces and cover more ground.  The lieutenant approved.  The left platoon extended intervals to ten paces, moving silently from centre to left.  This filled perhaps sixty yards of the unknown gap.  Still no pickets could be seen.  I made a semicircle far to my left and returned.