ed with him a sergeant entered, a man who
looked as if he lived in the saddle, and briefly reported that a gang of
guerillas were assembled at a certain place some miles away--I forget how
far, but the distance was traversed in an incredibly short time. The
general issued orders for a hundred cavalry to go at once and "get" them.
They "got" them, killing many, and the next morning, on looking from my
window, I saw the victors ride into the courtyard, many of them with
their captives tied neck and heels, like bags of corn, over the cruppers
of the horses. A nice night's ride they must have had! But the choice
was between death and being cruppered, and they preferred the latter to
coming a cropper. Strange that the less a man has to live for the more
he clings to life.

The general thought that if he gave us a corporal and four men, and if we
were well armed, that we _might_ go out on the Bole Jack road and return
unharmed, "unless we met with any of the great gangs of bushwhackers."
But he evidently thought, as did General Whipple, who did not heed a
trifle by any means, that we were going into the lion's jaws. So the
next morning, _equo iter ingredi_, I rode forth. I had some time before
been appointed aide-de-camp to Governor Pollock, of Pennsylvania, with
the rank of colonel, and had now two captains and a corporal with his
guard. It was a rather small regiment.

We heard grim stories that morning as to what had taken place all around
us within almost a few hours. Three Federal pickets had been
treacherously shot while on guard the night before; the troops had
surprised a gang of bushwhackers holding a ball, and firing through the
windows, dropped ten of them dead while dancing; two men had been
murdered by --- --- and his gang. This was a noted guerilla, who was
said to have gone south with the Confederate army, but who was more
generally believed to have remained in hiding, and to have committed most
of the worst outrages and murders of late.

At the first house where we stopped in the woods there lay a wounded man,
one of the victims of the dance the night before. The inmates were
silent, but not rude to us. I offered a man whisky, but he replied, "I
don't use it." We rode on. Once there was an alarm of "bushwhackers." I
should have forgotten it but for the memory of the look of Baldwin
Colton's eyes, the delighted earnestness of a man or of a wild creature
going to fight. He and his brother had hu