rming, we opened fire again, over and past them. This lasted
but a few minutes, and they were ready to advance. Steadily,
irresistibly, their line passed up the slope, into the woods, driving
every thing before it.

Our ammunition wagons had now come up, and we procured a fresh supply.
We immediately moved down the stream and crossed, to drive back the
enemy and retake the ground lost at this point. Here the bank on the
other side was abrupt, rising thirty or forty feet in a very short
distance, when level ground, partly open and partly wooded, extended
toward the west and north. On this steep bank we formed for the charge,
three lines of battle. The right of the regiment was detached, and
placed on the left of the lines of battle to cover the flank. When the
advance was made we deployed at skirmish distance, at a right angle
with the line, and moving in the same direction. In this advance, which
was made about two in the afternoon, we that were on the flank did not
fire a shot. We were not much exposed, though some bullets whistled
around.

We finally reached a farm-house in the midst of a large plantation. Here
we halted. We found some of our wounded abandoned by the enemy, who
seemed to have disappeared from our front. Perhaps the decisive battle
might have been fought on this afternoon instead of the following day,
by pushing the Fifth Corps across the White Oak Road on the right of the
intrenched position of the rebels. The course followed was probably the
safer one.

At first the house which we had reached seemed to be deserted; but a
little later we found the family, husband, wife, and daughter, concealed
in a cave in the garden. The man was a tall, gray-haired old gentleman,
all of them well dressed and evidently intelligent and refined people.
The old man was so frightened that he could scarcely speak. They seemed
to expect brutal treatment from the barbarians of the North, who, as it
happened, were quite their equals in culture and humanity.

About five in the evening General Bartlett's brigade of the First
Division was sent across the country to threaten the flank of the enemy,
who had now pressed Sheridan back to Dinwiddie Court-house. They marched
out past us toward the south-west, and disappeared from sight.

Darkness soon came on, and we prepared to pass another night under arms.
It had been a hard day. We had lost eighteen hundred men, and inflicted
a loss of one thousand on the enemy. Our losses fe