brigade losing nearly one-fourth within two hours.  The fire of the Union troops was low and very effective.  A battery here did fearful execution among the Rebels with shell, grape, and canister.  A wounded gunner belonging to this battery told me the shells were fired with one-second fuses.  Our men were ordered to lie down and load, and yet many were killed in this position, so accurate was the fire of the Federal troops.  I saw five men killed by the explosion of one shell.

About three o’clock I was sent to the rear with dispatches of the progress of the battle, and asking reinforcements.  When about half way to Beauregard’s staff, riding at full gallop, my first serious accident occurred, my life being saved by but a hair’s breadth.  As my horse rose in a long leap, his fore-feet in the air and his head about as high as my shoulder, a cannon-ball struck him above the eye and carried away the upper part of his head.  Of course the momentum carried his lifeless body some ten feet ahead, and hurled me some distance further,—­saber, pistols, and all.  I gathered myself up, and to my surprise was not hurt in the least.  One second later, the ball would have struck me and spared the horse.  Thankful for my life, I threw off my saber and my tight uniform-coat, gave my pistols to a cavalryman near by, and started in search of another horse.  General Breckenridge had told me in the morning, if my horse was killed to take the first unemployed one I could find.  I knew where some of the infantry field-officers had tied their horses in a ravine in the rear, and while seeking them, I met a scene which lives in my memory as if it were but yesterday.

I had just filled my canteen at a spring, and as I turned from it my eye met the uplifted gaze of a Federal officer, I think a colonel of an Illinois regiment, who was lying desperately wounded, shot through the body and both legs, his dead horse lying on one of his shattered limbs.  A cannon-ball had passed through his horse and both of his own knees.  He looked pleadingly for a drink, but hesitated to ask it of an enemy, as he supposed me to be.  I came up to him, and said, “You seem to be badly wounded, sir; will you have some water?”

“Oh, yes,” said he; “but I feared to ask you for it.”

“Why?”

“Because I expected no favor of an enemy.”

Two other men coming by, I called them to aid in removing the dead horse from his wounded limb.  They did so, and then passed on; but I seemed bound to him as by a spell.  His manly face and soldierly bearing, when suffering so terribly, charmed me.  I changed his position, adjusted his head, arranged his mangled legs in an easy posture, supporting them by leaves stuffed under the blanket on which we had laid him.  In the mean time he took out his watch and money, and requested me to hand him his pistols from the saddle-holsters, and urged me to take them, as some one might rob him, and I was the only one who had shown him kindness.  I declined, and wrapping them up in a blanket, placed them under his head, telling him the fortunes of war might yet bring his own troops to his side.  He seemed overcome, and said, “My friend, why this kindness to an enemy?”