rom this fate
we were saved by a good strong tremendous lie, well and bravely told.
There was a somewhat ungainly, innocent, rustic-looking youth in our
company, from whose eyes simple truth peeped out like two country girls
at two Sunday-school windows. He, having been sent to the barracks to
get some fodder, with strict injunction to return immediately, of course
lay down at once in the hay and had a good long nap. The rebels came and
roused him out, but promised to let him go free on condition that he
would tell the sacred truth as to how many of us Federal troops were in
Carlisle. And he, moved by sympathy for his kind captors, and swearing
by the Great Copperhead Serpent, begged them to fly for their lives; "for
twenty regiments of regulars, and Heaven only knew how many, volunteers,
had come in that afternoon, and the whole North was rising, and trains
running, and fresh levies pouring in."

The rebels believed him, but they would not depart without giving us a
touch of their quality, and so fired shell and grape in on us till two in
the morning. There were two regiments of "common fellows," or valiant
city roughs, with us, who all hid themselves in terror wherever they
could. But our company, though unable to fire more than a few shots,
were kept under fire, and, being all gentlemen, not a man flinched.

I did not, to tell the truth, like our captain; but whatever his faults
were, and he had some, cowardice was not among them. Some men are
reckless of danger; he seemed to be absolutely insensible to it, as I
more than once observed, to my great admiration. He was but a few feet
from me, giving orders to a private, when a shell burst immediately over
or almost between them. Neither was hurt, but the young man naturally
shied, when Landis gruffly cried, "Never mind the shells, sir; they'll
not hurt you till they hit you."

I was leaning against a lamp-post when a charge of grape went through the
lamp. Remembering the story in "Peter Simple," and that "lightning never
strikes twice in the same place," I remained quiet, when there came at
once another, smashing what was left of the glass about two feet above my
head.

Long after the war, when I was one day walking with Theodore Fassitt, I
told him the tale of how I had awakened the family at the fire in Munich.
And Theodore dolefully exclaimed, "I don't see why it is that _I_ can
never do anything heroic or fine like that!" Then I said, "Theodore, I
wil