athered
spruce-gum and sent it to our sweethearts in letters. We ascended every
hill within our picket-lines and called it a "peak."

And, by the way, during those halcyon days (the halcyon was there, too,
chattering above every creek, as he is all over the world) we fought
another battle. It has not got into history, but it had a real objective
existence although by a felicitous afterthought called by us who were
defeated a "reconnaissance in force." Its short and simple annals are hat
we marched a long way and lay down before a fortified camp of the enemy at
the farther edge of a valley. Our commander had the forethought to see
that we lay well out of range of the small-arms of the period. A
disadvantage of this arrangement was that the enemy was out of reach of us
as well, for our rifles were no better than his. Unfortunately--one might
almost say unfairly--he had a few pieces of artillery very well protected,
and with those he mauled us to the eminent satisfaction of his mind and
heart. So we parted from him in anger and returned to our own place,
leaving our dead--not many.

Among them was a chap belonging to my company, named Abbott; it is not odd
that I recollect it, for there was something unusual in the manner of
Abbott's taking off. He was lying flat upon his stomach and was killed by
being struck in the side by a nearly spent cannon-shot that came rolling
in among us. The shot remained in him until removed. It was a solid
round-shot, evidently cast in some private foundry, whose proprietor,
setting the laws of thrift above those of ballistics, had put his
"imprint" upon it: it bore, in slightly sunken letters, the name "Abbott."
That is what I was told--I was not present.

It was after this, when the nights had acquired a trick of biting and the
morning sun appeared to shiver with cold, that we moved up to the summit
of Cheat Mountain to guard the pass through which nobody wanted to go.
Here we slew the forest and builded us giant habitations (astride the road
from Nowhere to the southeast) commodious to lodge an army and fitly
loopholed for discomfiture of the adversary. The long logs that it was our
pride to cut and carry! The accuracy with which we laid them one upon
another, hewn to the line and bullet-proof! The Cyclopean doors that we
hung, with sliding bolts fit to be "the mast of some great admiral"! And
when we had "made the pile complete" some marplot of the Regular Army came
that way and chatted