Taps sounded.  We went asleep with our boots on, but nothing happened.

Three days and nights we waited.  Some called it a farce, some swore, some talked of going home.  I went about quietly, my bosom under its pad of feathers.  The third day an order came from headquarters.  We were to break camp at one-thirty in the morning and go down the pike after Beauregard.  In the dead of the night the drums sounded.  I rose, half-asleep, and heard the long roll far and near.  I shivered in the cold night air as I made ready, the boys about me buckled on knapsacks, shouldered their rifles, and fell into line.  Muffled in darkness there was an odd silence in the great caravan forming rapidly and waiting for the word to move.  At each command to move forward I could hear only the rub of leather, the click, click of rifle rings, the stir of the stubble, the snorting of horses.  When we had marched an hour or so I could hear the faint rumble of wagons far in the rear.  As I came high on a hill top, in the bending column, the moonlight fell upon a league of bayonets shining above a cloud of dust in the valley — a splendid picture, fading into darkness and mystery.  At dawn we passed a bridge and halted some three minutes for a bite.  After a little march we left the turnpike, with Hunter’s column bearing westward on a crossroad that led us into thick woods.  As the sunlight sank in the high tree-tops the first great battle of the war began.  Away to the left of us a cannon shook the earth, hurling its boom into the still air.  The sound rushed over us, rattling in the timber like a fall of rocks.  Something went quivering in me.  It seemed as if my vitals had gone into a big lump of jelly that trembled every step I took.  We quickened our pace; we fretted, we complained.  The weariness went out of our legs; some wanted to run.  Before and behind us men were shouting hotly, ‘Run, boys! run!’ The cannon roar was now continuous.  We could feel the quake of it.  When we came over a low ridge, in the open, we could see the smoke of battle in the valley.  Flashes of fire and hoods of smoke leaped out of the far thickets, left of us, as cannon roared.  Going at double quick we began loosening blankets and haversacks, tossing them into heaps along the line of march, without halting.  In half an hour we stood waiting in battalions, the left flank of the enemy in front.  We were to charge at a run.  Half-way across the valley we were to break into companies and, advancing, spread into platoons and squads, and at last into line of skirmishers, lying down for cover between rushes.

‘Forward!’ was the order, and we were off, cheering as we ran.  O, it was a grand sight! our colours flying, our whole front moving, like a blue wave on a green, immeasurable sea.  And it had a voice like that of many waters.  Out of the woods ahead of us came a lightning flash.  A ring of smoke reeled upward.  Then came a deafening crash of thunders — one upon another, and the