rebel soldier came toward me at full speed, with his
gun at a trail-arms. I did not notice him until he was within
twenty-five or thirty yards of me. I yelled at him to surrender; but he
came on without checking his speed. I stepped from the tree by which I
was standing, and leveled my rifle on him.

"Drop that gun!" I yelled again.

He dropped it as if it had burned him, and hustled off his
accouterments, and threw them on the ground. I made him stay with me,
intending to take him back myself. My cartridges were about exhausted,
and I fired all but one or two at the rear of the fleeing rebels, and
started back with the prisoner.

The sun had now gone down. The moon was shining peacefully. How quickly
those fateful hours of battle had passed! I started for the point where
our line had formed, expecting to dispose of my prisoner there, and then
sleep all night. As we passed along, the dead lay scattered here and
there as they fell. There was something startlingly solemn in those
motionless forms, the stony eyes staring in the moonlight.

Beyond the church I found a large number of prisoners, and turned over
my man to the guards, and started to return. I was joined by L. C.
Walb, who had also been back with prisoners. The church had been turned
into a hospital. It was full of wounded, and many were laid on the
ground outside. A few rods past the church we lay down to sleep. There
came a reaction after the excitement of the day. Nerves, strained to
their utmost tension for hours, relaxed, and seemed to tingle with the
pain of weariness. The jarring noises of battle were reproduced as the
senses glided through that strange interval between waking and sleeping,
and more than once I came back to consciousness with a start, scarcely
able, for a moment, to distinguish the real and the unreal. A low,
moaning sound came from the hundreds of wounded about the church; not
any single groan or cry of pain, but only a sound as if the hurried
breath from suffering lips smote upon the strings of an unseen harp,
which sounded out its sad cadences through the air. But at last I sunk
into a sound sleep.

Our losses were less severe than on the preceding day. Eight hundred and
thirty-four were killed and wounded, and fifty-four were missing. The
opposing force of the enemy was practically annihilated. Three thousand
were killed and wounded, and five thousand five hundred were made
prisoners. Eleven stand of colors were taken, and four