the river below, it was a grand, an awful
sight. I came out of the fight alive, but with a lump on my head as big
as a hen's egg, so big I couldn't wear my hat, and a firm determination
to whip that engineer who threw the lump of coal when I could catch him
alone. We cooked a late breakfast on the embers of the ruins, and after
eating, I noticed a sign, "Printing Office," in front of a residence
just outside the burnt district, and asked permission to go there and
print a paper, with an account of the fight, and the destruction of the
town. Permission was granted, and I went to the office and found an old
man and two daughters, beautiful girls, but intensely bitter rebels. The
old man was near eighty years old, and he said he could whip any dozen
yankees. I told him I would like to use his type and press, but he said
if I touched a thing I did it at my peril, as he should consider the
type contaminated by the touch of a yankee. The girls felt the same
way, but I talked nice to them, and they didn't kick much when I took
a "stick" and began to set type. I worked till dinner time, when they
asked me to take dinner with them, which I did. During the conversation
I convinced them that I was practically a non-combatant, and wouldn't
hurt anybody for the world. I worked till about the middle of the
afternoon, when I noticed that the girls, who had been up on the house,
looked tickled about something, and presently I heard some firing at
the edge of the town, some yelling, more firing, bugle calls among our
soldiers, and finally there was an absence of blue coats, and I looked
for my horse, and found the old man leading him away. I halted the old
man, and he stopped and told me that the Confederates had come into town
from the East and driven our cavalry out on the other side, and I would
be a prisoner in about five minutes, and he laughed, and the girls
clapped their hands, and I felt as though my time had come. I had never
killed an old man in my life, but I made up my mind to have my horse or
kill him in his traces, so I drew my revolver and told him to let go
the horse or he was a dead man. It was a question with me whether I
could hold my hand still-enough to kill him, if he didn't let go the
horse, and I hoped to heaven he would drop the bridle. He looked so much
like my father at home that it seemed like killing a near relative, and
when I looked at the two beautiful daughters on the gallery, looking at
us, pale as death