had fallen or been overtaken, and now in the last throes of a desperate snow battle.  I dared not look behind, but kept bravely on.  My breath grew fast and thick, and the camp seemed a perfect mirage, now near at hand then far in the distance.  The men who had not yet fallen in the hands of the reckless Georgians had distanced me, and the only energy that kept me to the race was the hope that some mishap might befall the wild-eyed man in my rear, otherwise I was gone.  No one would have the temerity to tackle the giant in his rage.  But all things must come to an end, and my race ended by falling in my tent, more dead than alive, just as I felt the warm breath of my pursuer blowing on my neck.  I heard, as I lay panting, the wild-eyed man say, “I would rather have caught that d——­n little Captain than to have killed the biggest man in the Yankee Army.”

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI

Campaign of 1863—­Battle of Chancellorsville.

On the morning of April 29th the soldiers were aroused from their slumbers by the beating of the long roll.  What an ominous sound is the long roll to the soldier wrapped in his blanket and enjoying the sweets of sleep.  It is like a fire bell at night.  It denotes battle.  It tells the soldier the enemy is moving; it means haste and active preparation.  A battle is imminent.  The soldiers thus roused, as if from their long sleep since Fredericksburg, feel in a touchous mood.  The frightful scenes of Fredericksburg and Mayree’s Hill rise up before them as a spectre.  Soldiers rush out of their tents, asking questions and making suppositions.  Others are busily engaged folding blankets, tearing down tents, and making preparations to move; companies formed into regiments and regiments into brigades.  The distant boom of cannon beyond the Rappahannock tells us that the enemy is to cross the river again and try conclusions with the soldiers of Lee.  All expected a bloody engagement, for the Federal Army had been greatly recruited, under excellent discipline, and headed by Fighting Joe Hooker.  He was one of the best officers in that army, and he himself had boasted that his was the “finest army that had ever been organized upon the planet.”  It numbered one hundred and thirty-one thousand men of all arms, while Lee had barely sixty thousand.  We moved rapidly in the direction of Fredericksburg.  I never saw Kershaw look so well.  Riding his iron-gray at the head of his columns, one could not but be impressed with his soldierly appearance.  He seemed a veritable knight of old.  Leading his brigade above the city, he took position in the old entrenchments.