been easy to play
the wounded Confederate--the Union troops would soon pick me up; but I
wanted to see where the defeated rebels would rally. A man, slightly
wounded, I suppose, threw down his gun near me, and kept on. I picked up
the gun--an Enfield rifle--and joined the fugitives. Unaccountably to
me, the disorder of the troops became greater, and a good many of the
stragglers disburdened themselves of whatever they could throw away. I
soon secured a cartridge-box, and a haversack, and with my own
canteen--the like of which there were many in the hands of the rebels--I
became, for the time, a complete Confederate soldier.

No immediate cause for the disorder of the rebels could be seen. The
Union troops were not in sight. I expected the brigade to soon make a
stand, but the retreat continued; sometimes I caught the contagion and
ran along with running men, although I was sure that organised bodies
were now covering our rear. I had no distinct purpose except to
determine the new line.

After some little time I began to wish that I was well out of the
scramble, but I saw no way out of it. Officers were riding about and
trying to make the men get into some sort of formation. Evening was
near, but I saw that before darkness should cover me the brigade would
be formed again and would make a new stand, or else retreat in better
order in the night.

I now gave up all hope of ever returning to find my horse, but felt
confident that Jones would recover him.

As I had anticipated, the retreat became less disorderly, and at last
ceased altogether. The officers succeeded in forming a line across a
road running to the westward, which I believed, from my knowledge of the
map, to be the Ashcake road. When I reached this forming line I
hesitated. I thought at first that I ought to make no pretence of
joining it; that prudence commanded me to keep far from it. Then the
thought came to me that these disorganized battalions ware forming in
any shape they could now take--men belonging to different companies,
and even to different regiments, being side by side; so I got into line
with them.

I smiled when I remembered that Dr. Khayme had once said that a spy
might find it his duty to desert to the enemy.

The men seemed to have lost none of the proper pride of the soldier, but
they were very bitter against some general or other unknown to me, and
equally so to them, as it appeared; he had allowed them to be defeated
when they cou