In the case of a private in Company C, Third Regiment, it was different.  He did not have the moral courage to resist the “secret monitor,” that silent whisperer of death.  He had always asserted that he would be killed in the first battle, and so strong was this conviction upon him, that he failed to keep in line of battle on another occasion, and had been censured by his officers for cowardice.  In this battle he was ordered in charge of a Sergeant, with instructions that he be carried in battle at the point of the bayonet.  However, it required no force to make him keep his place in line, still he continued true to his convictions, that his death was certain.  He went willingly, if not cheerfully, in line.  As the column was moving to take position on Mayree’s Hill, he gave instructions to his companions as he advanced what messages should be sent to his wife, and while giving those instructions and before the command reached its position he fell pierced through the heart.

Another instance that came under my own observation, that which some chose to call “presentiment,” was of a member in my company in East Tennessee.  He was an exceptionally good soldier and the very picture of an ideal hero, tall, erect, and physically well developed, over six feet in height, and always stood in the front rank at the head of the company.  While Longstreet was moving upon Knoxville, the morning he crossed the Tennessee River before dawn and before there was any indication of a battle, this man said to me, with as much coolness and composure, as if on an ordinary subject, without a falter in his tone or any emotion whatever:  “Captain, I will be killed to-day.  I have, some money in my pocket which I want you to take and also to draw my four months’ wages now due, and send by some trusty man to my wife.  Tell her also—­” but here I stopped him, told him it was childish to entertain such nonsense, to be a man as his conduct had so often in the past shown him to be.  I joked and laughed at him, and in a good-natured way told him the East Tennessee climate gave him that disease known among soldiers as “crawfishing.”  This I did to withdraw his mind from this gloomy brooding.  We had no real battle, but a continual skirmish with the enemy, with stray shots throughout the day.  As we were moving along in line of battle, I heard that peculiar buzzing noise of a bullet, as if in ricochet, coming in our direction, but high in the air.  As it neared the column it seemed to lower and come with a more hissing sound.  It struck the man square in the breast, then reeling out of ranks he made a few strides towards where I was marching, his pocket-book in hand, and fell dead at my feet without a word or groan.  He was the only man killed during the day in the brigade, and not even then on the firing line.  Of course all will say these are only “coincidences,” but be what they may, I give them as facts coming under my own eyes, and facts of the same nature came to the knowledge