pine tree and threw it on his line, and about
finished up what was left of his regiment. The shell burst just as it
struck the tree, and the shell fragments, and falling tree together,
killed twelve or fifteen men, and wounded a number of others.

The fighting was dying down now, and soon ceased. Our line restored, the
enemy made no further effort to take it. The rest of the time, till
dark, was taken up with sharp-shooting, and artillery fire. A farmhouse
and outbuildings and barn stood right behind our position, and, I
remember, the barn swallows in large numbers were skimming and
twittering all around, through the sweet, bright air, while shells and
balls were singing a very different sort of song. I never saw that sight
during the war but this once,--birds flying about in the midst of a
battle. But here, those dear little swallows circled round, and round
that barn, and the adjoining field, for hours, while the air was full of
flying missiles. They did not seem to mind it. Perhaps they wondered
what on earth was going on. It was a curious scene!

During the night we made some little addition to the slight earth work,
which the infantry had thrown up, in front of our two guns. Infantry
began to pile into the line on both sides of our guns; we learned that
this was the Twentieth South Carolina Regiment, Colonel Keitt, who had
been killed, in a fight the Regiment had been in, that afternoon.

This regiment, at this time when some Brigades in the Army of Northern
Virginia had not more than one thousand or twelve hundred men, came
among us with seventeen hundred men ready for duty. The regiment had
been stationed at Fort Sumter; had seen nothing of war except the siege
of a Fort, and their idea of the chief duty of a soldier was,--to get as
much earth between him and the enemy as possible. When they came into
line this night, and saw this slight bank of dirt,--about two feet
thick, and three feet high,--and learned that we expected, certainly, to
fight behind it in the morning, they were perfectly aghast! They pitched
in, and began to "throw dirt." They kept it up all night, and by morning
had a wall of earth in front of them, in many places eight feet high,
and six to seven feet thick.

How much higher, and thicker they would have got it, if the enemy had
not interrupted them, gracious only knows! Of course they couldn't begin
to shoot over it, except at _the sky_; perhaps they thought _anything
blue_ would do to sh