That afternoon we encountered a whole regiment of the enemy’s cavalry in line and a field-piece that dominated a straight mile of the turnpike by which we had approached.  My escort fought deployed in the woods on both sides, but Thurston remained in the center of the road, which at intervals of a few seconds was swept by gusts of grape and canister that tore the air wide open as they passed.  He had dropped the rein on the neck of his horse and sat bolt upright in the saddle, with folded arms.  Soon he was down, his horse torn to pieces.  From the side of the road, my pencil and field book idle, my duty forgotten, I watched him slowly disengaging himself from the wreck and rising.  At that instant, the cannon having ceased firing, a burly Confederate trooper on a spirited horse dashed like a thunderbolt down the road with drawn saber.  Thurston saw him coming, drew himself up to his full height, and again folded his arms.  He was too brave to retreat before the word, and my uncivil words had disarmed him.  He was a spectator.  Another moment and he would have been split like a mackerel, but a blessed bullet tumbled his assailant into the dusty road so near that the impetus sent the body rolling to Thurston’s feet.  That evening, while platting my hasty survey, I found time to frame an apology, which I think took the rude, primitive form of a confession that I had spoken like a malicious idiot.

A few weeks later a part of our army made an assault upon the enemy’s left.  The attack, which was made upon an unknown position and across unfamiliar ground, was led by our brigade.  The ground was so broken and the underbrush so thick that all mounted officers and men were compelled to fight on foot—­the brigade commander and his staff included.  In the melee Thurston was parted from the rest of us, and we found him, horribly wounded, only when we had taken the enemy’s last defense.  He was some months in hospital at Nashville, Tennessee, but finally rejoined us.  He said little about his misadventure, except that he had been bewildered and had strayed into the enemy’s lines and been shot down; but from one of his captors, whom we in turn had captured, we learned the particulars.  “He came walking right upon us as we lay in line,” said this man.  “A whole company of us instantly sprang up and leveled our rifles at his breast, some of them almost touching him.  ‘Throw down that sword and surrender, you damned Yank!’ shouted some one in authority.  The fellow ran his eyes along the line of rifle barrels, folded his arms across his breast, his right hand still clutching his sword, and deliberately replied, ‘I will not.’  If we had all fired he would have been torn to shreds.  Some of us didn’t.  I didn’t, for one; nothing could have induced me.”

When one is tranquilly looking death in the eye and refusing him any concession one naturally has a good opinion of one’s self.  I don’t know if it was this feeling that in Thurston found expression in a stiffish attitude and folded arms; at the mess table one day, in his absence, another explanation was suggested by our quartermaster, an irreclaimable stammerer when the wine was in:  “It’s h—­is w—­ay of m-m-mastering a c-c-consti-t-tu-tional t-tendency to r—­un aw—­ay.”