while on duty was liable to severe punishment, and, at any rate,
would be laughed at all over the regiment, and never hear the last of
it. So I didn't wake up my comrades, but got in the shadow of the trunk
of a tree, cocked my gun, and awaited developments. And soon they came.
The advancing line emerged from the forest into the moonlight, and it
was nothing but a big drove of hogs out on a midnight foraging
expedition for acorns and the like! Well, I let down the hammer of my
gun, and felt relieved,--and was mighty glad I hadn't waked the other
boys. But I still insist that this crackling, crashing uproar, made by
the advance of the "hog battalion" through the underbrush and woods,
under the circumstances mentioned, would have deceived "the very
elect."

A few days later I was again on picket at the old blacksmith shop. Our
orders were that at least once during the day one of the guard should
make a scout out in front for at least half a mile, carefully observing
all existing conditions, for the purpose of ascertaining if any parties
of the enemy were hovering around in our vicinity. On this day, after
dinner, I started out alone, on this little reconnoitering expedition.
I had gone something more than half a mile from the post, and was
walking along a dirt road with a cornfield on the left, and big woods
on the right. About a hundred yards in front, the road turned square to
the left, with a cornfield on each side. The corn had been gathered
from the stalk, and the stalks were still standing. Glancing to the
left, I happened to notice a white cloth fluttering above the
cornstalks, at the end of a pole, and slowly moving my way. And peering
through the tops of the stalks I saw coming down the road behind the
white flag about a dozen Confederate cavalry! I broke into a run, and
soon reached the turn in the road, cocked my gun, leveled it at the
party, and shouted, "Halt!" They stopped, mighty quick, and the bearer
of the flag called to me that they were a flag of truce party. I then
said, "Advance, One." Whereupon they all started forward. I again
shouted "Halt!" and repeated the command, "Advance, One!" The leader
then rode up alone, I keeping my gun cocked, and at a ready, and he
proceeded to tell me a sort of rambling, disjointed story about their
being a flag of truce party, on business connected with an exchange of
some wounded prisoners. I told the fellow that I would conduct him and
his squad to my picket post,