a good deal of “squeamishness” felt at the idea of being captured, cannot be doubted.  So videttes were stationed several hundred yards down the road with a picket post of four men, between the outside sentinels and the company, as reserve.  A large pine thicket was to our right, while on the left was an old field with here and there a few wild cherry trees.  The cherries being ripe, some of the men had gone up in the trees to treat themselves to this luscious little fruit.  The other part of the company lay indolently about, sheltering themselves as best they could from the rays of the hot July sun, under the trees.  Some lay on the tops of fences, and in corners, while not a few, with coats and vests off, enjoyed a heated game of “old sledge.”  All felt a perfect security, for with the pickets in front, the cavalry scouring the country, and the almost impassable barricades of the roads, seemed to render it impossible for an enemy to approach unobserved.  The guns leaned carelessly against the fence or lay on the ground, trappings, etc., scattered promiscuously around.  Not a dream of danger; no thought of a foe.  While the men were thus pleasantly engaged, and the officers taking an afternoon nap, from out in the thicket on the right came “bang-bang,” and a hail of bullets came whizzing over our heads.  What a scramble!  What an excitement!  What terror depicted on the men’s faces!  Had a shower of meteors fallen in our midst, had a volcano burst from the top of the Blue Ridge, or had a thunder bolt fell at our feet out of the clear blue sky, the consternation could not have been greater.  Excitement, demoralization, and panic ensued.  Men tumbled off the fences, guns were reached for, haversacks and canteens hastily grabbed, and, as usual in such panics, no one could get hold of his own.  Some started up the road, some down.  Officers thus summarily aroused were equally demoralized.  Some gave one order, some another.  “Pandemonium reigned supreme.”  Those in the cherry trees came down, nor did the “cherry pickers” stand on the order of their coming.  The whole Yankee army was thought to be over the hills.  At last the officer commanding got the men halted some little distance up the road; a semblance of a line formed, men cocked their guns and peered anxiously through the cracks of the rail fence, expecting to see an enemy behind every tree.  A great giant, a sergeant from the mountain section, who stood six feet, three inches in his stockings, and as brave as he was big, his face flushed with excitement, his whole frame trembling with emotion, in his shirt sleeves and bareheaded, rushed to the middle of the road, braced himself, as waiting for some desperate shock, and stood like Horatio Cockles at the Bridge, waving his gun in the air, calling out in defiant and stentorian voice, “Come on, I’ll fight all of you; I’ll fight old Lincoln from here to the sea.”  Such a laugh as was set up afterwards, at his expense!  The amusing part of it was the parties who fired the