e in place of the
musket he had brought with him.

"Are you a good shot?"

"Tolerable good," said John, who is an old fox-hunter.

"Do you see that Rebel riding yonder?"

"I do."

"Can you fetch him?"

"I can try."

The old man took deliberate aim and fired. He does not say he killed the
Rebel, but simply that his shot was cheered by the Wisconsin boys, and
that afterwards the horse the Rebel rode was seen galloping with an
empty saddle. "That's all I know about it."

He fought until our forces were driven back in the afternoon. He had
already received two slight wounds, and a third one through the arm, to
which he paid little attention: "only the blood running down my hand
bothered me a heap." Then, as he was slowly falling back with the rest,
he received a final shot through the leg. "Down I went, and the whole
Rebel army ran over me." Helpless, nearly bleeding to death from his
wounds, he lay upon the field all night. "About sun-up, next morning, I
crawled to a neighbor's house, and found it full of wounded Rebels." The
neighbor afterwards took him to his own house, which had also been
turned into a Rebel hospital. A Rebel surgeon dressed his wounds; and he
says he received decent treatment at the hands of the enemy, until a
Copperhead woman living opposite "told on him."

"That's the old man who said he was going out to shoot some of the
damned Rebels!"

Some officers came and questioned him, endeavoring to convict him of
"bushwhacking"; but the old man gave them little satisfaction. This was
on Friday, the third day of the battle; and he was alone with his wife
in the upper part of the house. The Rebels left, and soon after two
shots were fired. One bullet entered the window, passed over Burns's
head, and struck the wall behind the lounge on which he was lying. The
other shot fell lower, passing through a door. Burns is certain that the
design was to assassinate him. That the shots were fired by the Rebels
there can be no doubt; and as they were fired from their own side,
towards the town, of which they held possession at the time, John's
theory was plainly the true one. The hole in the window, and the
bullet-marks in the door and wall remain.

Burns went with me over the ground where the first day's fight took
place. He showed me the scene of his hot day's work,--pointed out two
trees, behind which he and one of the Wisconsin boys stood and "picked
off every Rebel that showed his head," and the spot