ing.

My own experiences this day were a taste of "the front," that is, the
excitement attending a momentarily expected "brush" with the enemy. Part
of the time my heart was in my mouth, and my hair seemed to stand
straight up. One can have little idea of this feeling until it has been
experienced. Any effort to describe it will be inadequate. Personal
fear? Yes, that unquestionably is at the bottom of it, and I take no
stock in the man who says he has no fear. We had been without food until
late in the afternoon for reasons heretofore explained. Towards night
one of my friends in Company K gave me a cup of coffee and a "hardtack."

Just before reaching Boonsborough, a pretty village nestling at the foot
of the South Mountain, our cavalry had a sharp skirmish with the rebel
rear-guard, in which Captain Kelley, of the Illinois cavalry, was
killed, I was told. At Boonsborough we found the field hospitals with
the rebel wounded from the fight of the day previous. Their wounded men
said their loss was over four hundred killed, among them two
brigadiers-general, one colonel, and several officers of lesser rank. A
rebel flag of truce came into our lines here to get the bodies of these
dead officers and to arrange for burying their dead and caring for their
wounded. The houses of Boonsborough had been mostly vacated by the
people on the approach of the rebel army and the fighting, and the
latter had promptly occupied as many of them as they needed for their
wounded. Imagine these poor villagers returning from their flight to
find their homes literally packed with wounded rebel soldiers and their
attendants. Whatever humble food supplies they may have had, all had
been appropriated, for war spares nothing. Some of the frightened people
of the village were returning as we passed through, and were sadly
lamenting the destruction of almost everything that could be destroyed
on and about their homes by this besom of destruction,--war. Food,
stock, fences, bed and bedding, etc., all gone or destroyed. Some of the
houses had been perforated by the shells,--probably our own shells,
aimed at the enemy. One man told me a shell had entered his house and
landed on the bed in the front room, but had not exploded. Had it
exploded, he would have had a bigger story to tell.

The rebels, we learned, had been gone but a few hours, and we were kept
in pursuit. We marched out the Shepherdstown road a few miles, reaching
and passing through anot