oyancy, and predicted that it would burst or fall
apart after a week. It certainly occurred that, after a few fitful
appearances, the stranger was seen no more, till, on the 28th of June,
it floated, like a thing of omen, over the spires of Richmond. At that
time the Federals were in full retreat, and all the acres were covered
with their dead.

On the 11th of April, at five o'clock, an event at once amusing and
thrilling occurred at our quarters. The commander-in-chief had appointed
his personal and confidential friend, General Fitz John Porter, to
conduct the siege of Yorktown. Porter was a polite, soldierly gentleman,
and a native of New Hampshire, who had been in the regular army since
early manhood. He fought gallantly in the Mexican war, being thrice
promoted and once seriously wounded, and he was now forty years of
age,--handsome, enthusiastic, ambitious, and popular. He made frequent
ascensions with Lowe, and learned to go aloft alone. One day he ascended
thrice, and finally seemed as cosily at home in the firmament as upon
the solid earth. It is needless to say that he grew careless, and on
this particular morning leaped into the car and demanded the cables to
be let out with all speed. I saw with some surprise that the flurried
assistants were sending up the great straining canvas with a single rope
attached. The enormous bag was only partially inflated, and the loose
folds opened and shut with a crack like that of a musket. Noisily,
fitfully, the yellow mass rose into the sky, the basket rocking like a
leather in the zephyr; and just as I turned aside to speak to a comrade,
a sound came from overhead, like the explosion of a shell, and something
striking me across the face laid me flat upon the ground.

Half blind and stunned, I staggered to my feet, but the air seemed full
of cries and curses. Opening my eyes ruefully, I saw all faces turned
upwards, and when I looked above,--the balloon was adrift.

The treacherous cable, rotted with vitriol, had snapped in twain; one
fragment had been the cause of my downfall, and the other trailed, like
a great entrail, from the receding car, where Fitz John Porter was
bounding upward upon a Pegasus that he could neither check nor direct.

The whole army was agitated by the unwonted occurrence. From battery No.
1, on the brink of the York, to the mouth of Warwick river, every
soldier and officer was absorbed. Far within the Confederate lines the
confusion extended. We