Fagots from the camp fire

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Introduction

BY

EMILY THORNTON CHARLES.

{Emily Hawthorne.')

In presenting a new book to the public, it is not necessary that the reasons therefor should be set forth in a long introduction or a tedious explanation. It is appropriate, however, that as the publisher of this unique volume, I point out its strangely original features, which impelled me to take an interest in its success and commend it to the rank and file of our army of brave defenders, as well as to those who wore the gray. Many books have been written since the war, illustrative of battles, teeming with glowing descriptions, and claiming glorious victories won by mighty generals, as in the history of the campaigns written of or given by Grant, Sherman, Johnston, and others. Most of these volumes have been biographical, rather than historical. Of those last emanating from the South, that of Hon. Alex. H. Stephens is, perhaps, the most just and unprejudiced. It gives expression to the views of a statesman, thinker, and scholar. It is therefore on a high plane, and may not, as it should, be thoroughly understood by the masses.

" Fagots from the Camp Fire " is exceptional in its style and scope. Its graphic delineation of the coarsest phases of every-day life ; its portrayal of most thrilling incidents within the experience of soldiers and people of the South ; how they loved and hated, starved and died ; and the tender pathos which marks many pages, although told in the rude language of the uneducated, yet bear that "wondrous touch of nature which makes the whole world kin."

While leaders of opposing armies may not acquiesce in all theories propounded in "Fagots from the Camp Fire," the common people, and especially soldiers who participated in these campaigns, will agree that these extraordinary narratives are as nearly literally true as it is possible to make them, after the lapse of fifteen years.

That "truth is stranger than fiction," is often illustrated in these pages. The chief of scouts, who figures so conspicuously, holds a paper signed by General J. B. Hill, Provost Marshal-General of the Confeder-

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6 INTRODUCTION.

ate Army, and endorsed "Approved " by General Joseph E. Johnston, now a Member of Congress from Virginia, which states that Captain *** * ******? of Company B, 7th Texas Regiment, Granberry's Brigade, served as a scout in the campaign of Georgia, and that he acquitted himself with great skill, courage, and adroitness. Thus the absolute accuracy of the "Captain's" statements is attested. The distinctive features, therefore, of this publication, are that it gives an insight into modes of life in the Gulf States and in Tennessee, which have never before been portrayed ; that the wild adventures and desperate deeds of Southern scouts are authentic incidents and true to the life ; and that it is the only book published which, while reciting such adventures, and depicting such scenes, is written, from a Union standpoint. If the author at times advances theories which may not be approved, it must be remembered that these are one man's opinions in relation to subjects about which so few think alike. It must not be forgotten that a truthful and just picture of the country, people, and times could not have been given if the rudest, most ludicrous stories told had been omitted.

Having, as the editor of the World and Soldier, at Washington, been the recipient of thousands of letters within the past few months, from veteran soldiers of the Union ; knowing how eagerly the "boys in blue" read every scrap of war history, and having received, also, many tributes from Confederate ex-soldiers in praise of the soldier's paper, although it advocates the interests and tells of the deeds of their former foes, I earnestly believe that the time has come when dissension should be buried in the grave of oblivion, and that those who wore the blue should clasp hands with those who wore the gray—

For both have suffered and both have lost, And victory won was at fearful cost.

Therefore, commending this book to the public, we shall follow it, in a few weeks, with "The Soldier's Scrap-Book," a volume of campaign stories for the rank and file, in which many of the war incidents related by common soldiers will appear, with a collection of battle, decoration, and memorial poems. No one can conscientiously conduct a newspaper in the interest of soldiers without a desire to benefit and immortalize those who so bravely endured danger and privation, suffering and death. Such, at least, has been my experience ; and —

My thought keeps guard with funeral tread,

O'er silent bivouacs of the dead;

O'er fields where friends and foes have bled ;

O'er hospital and prison bed ;

O'er plains where death his phalanx led ;

My mind is as a lettered tome,

In which is writ, they ne'er came home.

Preface

I do not tell of great battles, or Generals, or Presidents, or Kings, and therefore, do not write history. I only define the woes, triumphs, modes of thinking, living, fighting, and dying of scouts and common soldiers. I tell of wild adventures, hideous deaths, and marvelous escapes. I recite terrible incidents, others ludicrous, and others most pitiful; and if a narrative be rude in expression, significance, or morals, it is because, if more tasteful, it would not be truthful.

Mankind recks more of Thermopylae, with its handful of heroes, than of all the fields of filthy carnage on which Persians fell and Greeks triumphed. The Alamo, with its one hundred and sixty-five immortal defenders, leaving no survivors, will be the subject of song and story when Arbela, Cannae, and Austerlitz are forgotten.

I cannot help thinking, therefore, that with such themes, and when I tell, too, of the woes of women, and of vices that sprang from war, and then of the negro and his relations to victors and vanquished, that this book will excite interest. This will hardly be lessened when, because of my apprehension of his virtues and character, I have chosen, without his consent, to dedicate this modest volume to Colonel W. W. Dudley, the maimed veteran whose devotion to the interests and fame of Union soldiers is only equaled by his generous estimate of the virtues of those who starved and fought for the hapless

Confederacy.

THE AUTHOR.

Chapter I

Scenes of Adventures. — Unionism in East Tennessee. — How Lincoln was Esteemed. — The First Blood Spilled. — Heroism of Women 13

Chapter II

Our First Expedition. — The March. — Bushwhackers. — Very like Assassination. — Too Much Corn Whiskey. — A Love Scene. — Increasing Danger. — Involuntary Hospitality.— Spratling's Ire, and Baptism Extraordinary. — Bushwhackers Foiled. — The Fury of a Woman 17

Chapter III

A Narrow Escape. — A Very Cold Bath. — Gorgeous Scenery. — Colder Still. — A Newspaper Man Spins a Yarn. — A Little Retrospection 27

Chapter IV

The Newspaper Man Tells of His Escape from Burnside. — Compulsory Sermonizing.— "Tristram Shandy." — A Solemn and Terrible Indictment. — The Good that Came of It. — Descent of the Mountain. — Hunger and Roast Hog. — Plans for the Future 31

Chapter V

Patrolling the "Neutral Ground." — "Mountain Dew." — A Ghastly Spectacle. The — Tree of Death. — Bushwhackers and Great Fright. — Successful Expedition. — Cowardice Punished. — Mamie Hughes. — Day Dreams. — Southern Men and Women as affected by the War. — Negro Slaves and Southern Women. — Southern Planters. — Mamie's Home and Negro Slavery 36 io CONTENTS.

Chapter VI

The Fascinating Deserter and Gay Widow. — An Accommodating Negro. — The Capture. — Unearthing a Deserter. — "Ef this 'ere Umbaril would shoot." — A Corruptible Juvenile. — A Woman who loved Whiskey, and how it mollified Her 44

Chapter VII

Soldierly Courage. — Another Deserter. — A Mountain Beauty. — A Dying Soldier. — "He took up his Bed and Walked." — Spratling falls in Love. — Ash-Cakes. — Ellison Escapes 49

Chapter VIII

The Underground Railway. — A Desperate Adventure. — Secession in Kentucky and Tennessee. — In a Bushwhackers' Den. — An Heroic Woman. — The Catastrophe.— A Graveyard Scene. — The Ghost. — A " Notiss." — A Woman's Eloquence and Matchless Patriotism. — A Monument to her Fame 55

Chapter IX

Conservatism. — Bell and Douglas. — Andrew Johnson. — "Rebels" and "Bushwhackers."— Mamie Hughes and the Bushwhacker 64

Chapter X

A Fat and Enthusiastic Widow. — General Sherman makes an Heroic Speech and buys a Turkey. — The Pedagogue moralizes. — Terrible Condition of East Tennessee.— Effects of the War on the South. — Demagogues. — Landon C. Haines' Father 67

CHAPTER XL

Within the Federal Lines. — Friendly Negroes. — Pursued by Federal Cavalry. — An Unequal Race for Life. — Fighting, Freezing, and Feasting. — Cold Water Baptism.— Exhaustion. — An Imposing Spectacle. — A Friendly Proposition. — In Search of Comfort. — Baked "'Possum and Taters." — Welcome Repose. — Poor Whites. — Elisha Short's Opinions. — The Sun Rises. — Arduous Tasks. — General Joseph E. Johnston and the Scouts. — A Scout's Mode of Life. — The General listens to a Love Story 71

t

Chapter XII

The Pedagogue Talks of Mamie Hughes. — Physical Wonders of East Tennessee. — Sequatchie Valley. — An Ancient Ocean. — Mamie Philosophizes. — The Negro as a Soldier 81

Chapter XIII

Spratling and Bessie Starnes. — The Pedagogue corrects a Chapter in the History of the War. — Who killed General John H. Morgan? — How he was Esteemed. — The Camp Fire. — The Newspaper Man and the Pedagogue. — A Political Discussion.— Absurdties of Revolution. — The Two Nations and the Confederate War-Song 86

CONTENTS. ii

Chapter XVII

Spratling makes a Descent upon the Bushwhackers. — An Extraordinay Meeting. — Spratling suddenly loses his Appetite. — At Headquarters. — Camp Life. — Woman in War and Politics. — Why this Book was written. — Camp Fire Morals. — An Illustration. — A Ludicrous and Pitiful Story. — An Old Woman Eloquent. — "The Foremostest Sin that God Almighty will go about Forgiving." 109

Chapter XVIII

Death of Major General Van Dorn. — A True Story and Sad Enough. — The Northern Version 118

Chapter. XIX

The Song that destroyed the Confederacy and dissolved its Annies. — Most Remarkable Military Expedition of which Human History Tells or Genius ever Conceived or Executed. — The Memorable Campaign of Moral Effects. — Its Painful and Pitiful Results. — An Apparition. — The Great Explosion in Knoxville. — Death of Bill Carter 123

Chapter. XX

The Newspaper Man Tells of Recent Designations of the Route of De Soto. — His

Apothecary's Scales and Nest of Horseshoes. — The Monk's Rosary. — Governor

Gilmer's Castilian Dagger Handle. — Outline of De Soto's Route Defined. —

His Burial Place 133

Chapter XXI

Physical and Climatic Charms of East Tennessee. — The Captain and Spratling Pursued by Cavalry. — A Bloody Day's Work. — Spratling Visits Bessie Starnes. — Wounded. — The Conflagration and Flight 142

Chapter XXII

The Captain Pursued as a Horse-Thief. — How he Escaped very Narrowly. — A Brave Boy. — Deposition of General Joseph E. Johnston. — How he Bade us Adieu. — Woes of Richmond. — The Famed Cemetery of Virginia's Capital. — The Poor Child.— Its Burial Place 152

12 CONTENTS..

Chapter XXIII

Woes of the People. — How Endured. — An Ancient Georgia Village. — Curious Story about Governor Gilmer and William H. Crawford. — Slave Life Fifty Years Ago- — Joseph Henry Lumpkin. — How African Slavery became African Servitude" — Providential Preparation for Freedom 162

Chapter I

Scenes of Adventures. — Unionism in East Tennessee. — How Lincoln was Esteemed. — ■ The First Blood Spilled. — Heroism of Women.

After Grant's victory and Bragg's defeat, at Missionary Ridge, in November, 1863, and after the repulse of Hooker's Corps at Ringgold Gap by Cleburne's Division, Federal and Confederate armies went into winter quarters — the former at Chattanooga ; the latter, at Dalton, Georgia. Detachments of Federal forces occupied positions, at short intervals, from Knoxville to Chattanooga, and thence to Bridgeport on the Tennessee River. Small bodies of Union soldiers held each railway station between Bridgeport and Nashville'. Over this road supplies and re-enforcements for Sherman's army of invasion were drawn, and an army was required for its protection. General Joseph E. Johnston, commanding the Confederate forces, had his headquarters at Dalton, thirty-eight miles from Chattanooga, drawing supplies over the railway from Atlanta. General Pat Cleburne's Division was encamped along the brow of Tunnel Hill, eight or ten miles north of Dalton. In February, this cantonment was transferred to a point east of Dalton on the Spring Place Road. Our cavalry held the line from Kinton's Farm, nine miles, to Varnell's station, on the railway from Dalton to Cleveland, and thence along the hills to the Stone Church, just south of Ringgold Gap, thence to Villanow and to the boundary line of Alabama. The railway distance from Dalton to Chattanooga is thirty-eight miles. Between these points occurred many of the strange and extraordinary incidents and adventures of which subsequent pages will tell.

The area of country between the two armies within which scouts operated, having the average width of fifteen miles, extended from Knoxville, in East Tennessee, about one hundred and eighty miles, to Huntsville, Alabama. Generals Sherman and Johnston both employed large numbers of scouts, but collisions between these were neither as frequent nor dangerous as between Southern scouts and citizens of the country, the greater number of whom were devoted to the cause for which Sherman fought. The domestic enemies of the South were the more dangerous, not only because more blood-thirsty and murderous than soldiers, but because it was quite impossible to distinguish these bushwhackers, as they were termed in the partisan jargon of the period, from unoffending country clodhoppers.

We contemplated the most innocent-looking and rudely clad country bumpkins with keen suspicion. They recognized us at a glance, and hied away, as soon as our backs were turned, to tell our enemies of the course we had taken and of our probable resting place for the night. After asking directions from such persons, which we never followed, we were accustomed to listen for the firing of signal guns, of which we comprehended the import as well as they to whose ears they were addressed. With the armed bushwhacker we knew how to deal, but were helpless in the presence of those who seemed wholly intent upon the perfection of crops and cultivation of fields and gardens. We soon learned that most innocent-looking farmers underwent sudden and violent transformations of conduct and character. Rustiest, most illiterate and rudely clad plowmen became even demoniacal in blood-thirstiness, and in this were wholly unlike our Northern public enemies. From hollow trees, or from beneath ledges of stones on mountain-sides hard -by the farm-house, concealed breech-loaders were drawn, and assassins' bullets sent many Confederate soldiers to untimely graves.

Women and children were as false to the South and as true to the Union as fathers, brothers, and sons, and woe to the Confederate soldier, recognized as such, who followed paths into which he was guided by these loyalists. Many an unnamed grave tells where unknown and forgotten scouts heedlessly confided in statements made by matronly dames or blushing maidens. Often were brave men lured into modest cottages by proffered food temptingly spread before the weary and hungry. The feast was one of death. While hunger and thirst were appeased, and repose cunningly invited, an unseen member of the household sped away to mountain fastnesses to carry tidings of the scout's folly to the bushwhackers' strong-hold. The messenger returned with enough resolute men to render escape impossible. Matron, maid, or boy hastened from every mountaineer's home to tell bushwhackers the route of every body of Confederate scouts that traversed the so-called neutral ground between the two great armies of the North and South. Such was the condition of affairs and such the conduct of the masses of the people, especially in Eastern Tennessee. The people were poor. They read the Bible and Brownlow's Whig. They listened to Andrew Johnson, if Democrats; to Brownlow and Nelson, if Whigs ; and thus, as political thinkers, were led, almost en masse, into thorough Unionism. The strongest passion of these illiterate descendents of heroes of King's Mountain and Cowpens impelled them to kill. " Death to enemies of the Union !" was the legend inscribed

IPN upon their hearts and memories. The bushwhackers' definition of war was written accurately in tears and blood, and flame and famine by General Sherman. It was simple destructiveness. It meant to kill.

At this period President Lincoln had won little popular sympathy or affection among Southern loyalists. His potency came later and was greatest after his death. Then Eastern Tennessee and Northern Georgia celebrated his apotheosis, awarding to his name and memory profounder respect and more honest reverence than was conceded by those who were near enough the veritable demi-god to discover human frailties.

These facts are defined that Northern people may confess some inadequate appreciation of the sturdy, honest devotion of those men and women whose sacrifices in behalf of the Union were a thousandfold greater than of men who bought substitutes, paid taxes, speculated in shoddy and bonds, and celebrated the Fourth of July and Black Friday.

East Tennessee loyalists believed that the enemies of the Union deserved death, and death it was, and this internecine war, waged by one against another household, or by members of the same family, arrayed against one another, was the most relentless, bloody, and ruinous that ever desolated hearths and homes.

Rarely, very rarely, was it a "rebel's" good fortune to encounter in this region devotees at the shrine of " Confederatism." Now and then, as these pages will show, this "Switzerland of America" produced a secessionist, as earnest, devout, and active as were Union men like Crutchfield and Brownlow. It may not be improper to suggest that the first blood spilled in the great conflict was not, as is commonly supposed, at Alexandria, Virginia, when the zouave fell, but in Chattanooga, when "Bill" Crutchfield, afterwards, when Reconstruction progressed, a Member of Congress, was stricken down in his own hotel in Chattanooga. Mr. Jefferson Davis, having resigned his seat in the United States Senate, was on his way to Jackson, Mississippi. His first speech in behalf of the "new nation" was made at Bristol; his second, at Chattanooga, and in the bar-room of the old hotel, of which "Bill" Crutchfield was proprietor. Davis was defining numberless wrongs inflicted upon the South, and woes that had befallen the country in the election of Lincoln, when Crutchfield, intolerant as Davis, pronounced Davis' statements false. One John W. Vaughn, sheriff of Monroe County, afterwards made a brigadier by Davis, instantly, in defence of Davis' wounded honor, broke a black bottle, snatched from the shelf of the bar-room, over Crutchfield's head. The bleeding, stunned Crutchfield was borne helpless and senseless from the scene of conflict, shedding the first blood spilled in the war. It trickled out of East Tennessee into the mighty torrent that soon afterward flowed, steadily and sluggishly, along the course of Sherman's march to the sea.

The neutral ground contained few inhabitants entertaining the feelings or convictions of Vaughn, and Northern, encountered no such dangers as Southern, scouts surmounted or evaded at every step in Eastern Tennessee and Northern Georgia. Now and then a woman was loyal to the cause of the South, and the bravest and truest of our race, whether adhering to the Union or to the Confederacy, were fearless women of the mountains and valleys between the two armies. When England and Scotland were at war, the Border produced no more illustrious examples of splendid heroism or of nobility of character, or of fidelity to a cause espoused, than this mountainous, rugged district in which incidents occurred of which these pages tell. Some Walter Scott will yet make posterity remember, when traversing Northern Alabama, Northern Georgia, Western North Carolina, and Eastern Tennessee, that a sort of sanctity overshadows this region, and that it is holy ground, baptized in the blood of a border war more deadly than that waged with the rude weapons of a rude age in glens and mountain fastnesses of Scotland. For such a story-teller this modest volume contains facts on which fiction might build a pantheon peopled with gods of heroism and patriotism.

Chapter II

Our First Expedition. — The March. — Bushwhackers. — Very like Assassination. — Too Much Corn Whiskey. — A Love Scene. — Increasing Danger. — Involuntary Hospitality.— Spratling's Ire, and Baptism Extraordinary. — Bushwhackers Foiled. — The Fury of a Woman.

What follows in this narrative is nothing more than a plain recital of facts drawn from memoranda made at the time. Written with a pencil eighteen years ago these are not always perfectly legible, but enough can be deciphered to recall vividly the minutest details of incidents strongly impressed upon the memory of one only eighteen years of age when he became a chief of scouts in the army of Joseph E. Johnston.

On the day abvoe mentioned Major-General Pat Cleburne, of the most skillful and bravest of General Johnston's subordinates, selected six men, of whom I was given charge, instructing us to make the circuit of Sherman's army. We were to fix the location of each command, define the force at each point and the strength of each fortified position. We were to go first to Charleston on the Hiwassee River and learn what progress was making in rebuilding the railway bridge burned there by the retreating Confederates.

After a toilsome march of thirty miles, avoiding public highways, we rested for the night at Red Clay, a little village on the boundary line of Tennessee. We dared not make a fire. Armed with Henry rifles and Colt's repeaters and having forty rounds of ammunition and rations for five days, our journeying had been toilsome and fatiguing. Our conversations were conducted in an undertone. We moved even cautiously in the thicket in which we were concealed, fearing that the slightest unusual noise would attract the attention of some drowsy Federal sentinel.

Surely one who has never occupied such a position or confronted such dangers can never comprehend the emotions excited by our iS FAGGOTS FROM THE CAMP FIRE.

suddenly changed condition. For months and years we had constituted inseparable parts of a great mass of armed men. We were never conscious of personal danger. The possibility of capture or death, save in battle, never occurred to us. We had never a thought for ourselves. Parts of a vast machine, we lived and moved as such until personal identity was almost unrecognized. But here were six men — a seventh, a newspaper man, joined us at Charleston — giving only voluntary obedience to one of their number. We were not only removed from the mass of which we had become an inseparable part, but thrown, in the midst of extraordinary dangers, wholly upon our own resources as men and as individuals. We could not sleep. We were in the enemy's lines, and when fatigue wooed repose and fitfully closed 'our eyes, we dreamed of spies dangling at ropes' ends beneath shadows of great oaks that stretched mighty arms above our restingplace.

Wherever we slept one or two men always stood as sentinels until we resumed our march. We will never forget the feeling of unutterable solitariness and hopeless helplessness that possessed nerves and soul, and almost paralyzed us when we lay down on the frozen hillside to rest on the night of December 14, 1863. We could hear the dull roar of innumerable human voices and footsteps about the camp fires of Sherman's countless legions.

We stood guard in turn, each serving four hours. After daylight we dared "to have fire enough to prepare strong coffee, most grateful to men who had passed a bitterly cold December night upon the bare earth, each covered by a single blanket.

At daylight we resumed our march, moving in indian file along the verge of the mountain range's summit. At noon we approached the Big Blue Spring. One of our number ascended a tree with a field glass, whence he scanned hills and valleys on every hand. We made coffee, rested an hour, and marched towards Cleveland where, at nightfall, we bivouacked.

We could hear the drum-beat of the Federal garrison and ourselves next morning were aroused by reveille. We loitered two days gathering information from the people of the place in reference to the strength of the garrison and examining for ourselves the earthworks, and marched to the Hiwassee River just below the village of Charleston. Here, as details hereafter given will show, our small force of six men was recruited by the accession of a seventh, a newspaper man, who had escaped from Knoxville when the place was captured by General Burnside.

We wanted other edibles in substitution for hard-tack and bacon. It was agreed that Spratling, a fearless, gigantic young soldier, and I should apply at a farm-house fifteen miles away, said to have a wellstocked larder, to buy such provisions as were required. We had learned that the farmer we proposed tb visit was a peaceful Union man, but were advised to be watchful. "He might betray us." We reached his pretty cottage late in the afternoon, and ate at his table, paying for the privilege. We were not his invited guests, and as such, owed him nothing. Spratling said that this reflection, ever afterward, gave him great satisfaction. The farmer and his ivife agreed at table that they would send a well-freighted market wagon next morning to our camp. The wife was especially demonstrative, suggesting that we might have a fire and occupy a small house a few rods away in a corner of the yard. We expressed a proper sense of gratitude and soon sought this resting place. We built a fire, talked cheerily half an hour to our kindly host, spread blankets before the blazing faggots, smoked our pipes, and then, bidding him good night, with repeated assertions of gratitude, rested on the floor.

But neither Spratling nor I slept. As soon as the sound of Mr. McMath's footsteps was inaudible, Spratling whispered :

"I mean to watch that old coon. I think he is playing falsely, and if he seek to betray us, he won't find Spratling stupidly sleeping."

I concurred in this, and we covered the blazing faggots in the fire-place with ashes. When the flames were extinct, Spratling and I, lying on our faces, crept out of the hut. One stood as sentinel while the other slept just outside the enclosure about the buildings. An hour had hardly passed when Spratling, then on watch, saw McMath issue from his doorway with his wife. She even followed him to the stable, urging him to ride "hard and fast" to the bushwhackers' camp, not more, as we learned afterward, than five miles away.

We now knew what was coming. We discussed the propriety of leaving ; but Spratling insisted that he must await the issue.

"I would never forgive myself," he said, "if I fled without punishing that old scoundrel's treason to pretended friendship and hospitalty. If he return alone, we will capture and send him south. If he come with five or a dozen bushwhackers, we will stampede or seize their horses, kill as many of the enemy as possible, and take refuge in the creek bottom which we examined this afternoon."

Spratling and I had slept two hours each, when we heard the clatter of coming hoofs. We counted the bushwhackers as they entered the gate, near which they left their horses. The mistress of the cottage met them at the door. She had been keeping watch, and would have discovered our "change of base" if we had not crawled noiselessly, lying on our faces, out of the cabin.

It was nearly five o'clock in the morning when we could see that some one of the eight persons in the house always watched the cabin door. McMath's wife was now actively engaged going in and out of the kitchen, and soon breakfast was spread. It is needless to suggest that Spratling and I were not asked to share this early matutinal meal. We saw the good, fat dame convey a significant brown jug, soon eloquent, as through all the ages of the world's history, of devilish deeds, into the hallway occupied by the six bushwhackers. They drank. It was the last draught of alcohol that ever went hissing down the throats of more than one of those terrible men, who thus nerved themselves for bloodv, murderous deeds.

Spratling and I had gone to the rear of the house, nearer the woods, and were at a point whence we could see distinctly every person in the hallway. In this, as stated, the breakfast-table was spread. We were now protected by the palings, shrubbery, and peavines in the garden between us and the house. The sun had hardly lighted up with earliest rays the tree-tops on the highest hills when the bushwhackers, McMath watching the door of the cabin we had vacated, sat about the breakfast-table. Their guns were ranged, leaning against the wall, on either side of the broad, open hall.

Our opportunity had come. We were about to avenge, in advance, our own contemplated deaths.

Three bushwhackers sat on either side of the table. We crawled along the palings till we reached a point from which only two of the enemy and Mrs. McMath, who sat at the head of the table with her back towards us, were visible. Three men in the line of each of our shots, we leveled our rifles. I gave the word "fire," in a hoarse whisper. I abhorred the necessity. A cold tremor ran along my nerves. I shuddered.