spect, I was hindered also. The pickets would be more alert, and I
felt compelled to keep at a greater distance from the line. I made
another advance, and this time continued advancing, for to my
gratification I found no extension of the picket-line in front of me. I
thought at first that it had been thrown back here, and that I was now
going along the western front.

To make sure, I turned to the right--to the east--and went perhaps three
hundred yards without finding anything, and felt convinced that there
was no western front to the rebel line. I continued to advance eastward,
going straight toward the railroad. At length I had gone a quarter of a
mile, and had found nothing.

Now I began to believe that the rebel picket-line had been withdrawn
while I was going around the field, and I conjectured that the
Confederates had become aware of the approach of our column, and had
retreated, or else were concentrating to meet our advancing troops.

Suddenly I heard a cannon fire, seemingly a mile away, in a
southeasterly direction.

For a clear understanding of the situation it would perhaps be well to
state here that both Frank and Jones had reached the cavalry under
General Emory, at the head of our column, and had reported to him as
well as to General Morell; and that our column had advanced by the road
we had left, had thrown out a skirmish-line which extended beyond the
railroad, but not far enough, and had continued to advance until the
enemy were felt.

The cannon which I had heard, and which continued to fire, were of
Benson's battery of U.S. artillery, and this was the beginning of the
battle of Hanover Court-House, so called.

At this time one of Branch's regiments--the Twenty-eighth North Carolina
under Colonel Lane--was at Taliaferro's Mill at the head of Crump's
Creek, on a road to the right of our advancing column, which had thus
interposed, without knowing it, between the two bodies of Confederates.
At the first warning of the Union advance, General Branch had formed his
troops facing the east and southeast, and covering the Ashcake road,
which runs in a sort of semicircle from the Hanover road to Ashland on
the west, so that the attack of the Union forces against the main body
of rebels merely forced them to give ground in the direction of Ashland.
Lane, at Taliaferro's Mill, was left to work his way out, which he did
later in the afternoon with considerable loss.

Now, when the fight opened, the mos