How can you expect a man, who is supremely interested in a small incident, to think it small?  For my part, it was a rarity to see even a big shell, unless it was a tired one.  I dodged per order, mostly.  Of course, when I saw the smoke of a cannon, and know that the cannon was looking toward me, I got under cover without waiting for the long roll; but it was amusing sometimes to hear fellows cry out, “I see a shell coming this way,” at the smoke of a gun, and have everybody seeking shelter, when no sound of a shell would follow, the missile having gone into the woods half a mile to our right or left.

I grew more attached to Willis.  If the Army of the Potomac had in its ranks any better soldier than this big red-beaded sergeant, I never saw him.  He was ready for any duty, no matter what:  to lead a picket squad into its pits under fire; to serve all night on the skirmish detail in place of a sick friend; to dig and shoot and laugh, and swear, in everything he was simply superb.  That I do not quote his cuss-words must not be taken as an indication, that they were commonplace.  Everything he did he did with, his might, almost violently.  He was a good shot, too, within the range of the smooth-bore.  The rebel pickets—­most of them—­seemed to be better armed than we were; it was said that they had received some cargoes of long Enfields—­nine hundred yards’ range, according to the marked sights, and no telling how far beyond—­by blockade-runners.  They could keep us down behind the pits while they would walk about as they chose, unless a shell from one of our batteries was flung at them, in which case they showed that they, too, had been studying the dodging lesson.  Willis was greatly disgruntled over the fact that the rebels were the better armed, and frequently his temper got the upper hand of him.  A bullet went through his hat one day when he was trying vainly to pick off a man in a rifle-pit; Willis’s bullet would cut the dirt a hundred yards too short; the Enfield Minie ball would go a-kiting over our heads and making men far to our rear look out.  Sometimes Willis was very gloomy, and I attributed this condition to his passion for Lydia, though, on such a subject he never opened his mouth to me.

One dark rainy night, about the 21st, I believe, Willis and I were both on the picket detail.  It came my time for vedette duty, and Willis was the sergeant to do the escort act.  There had been skirmishing on this part of the line the preceding day, but at sunset, or the hour for sunset if the weather had been fair, the firing had ceased as we marched up and relieved the old pickets.  We were in the woods, the most of us, but just here, on the right of our own detail, there were a few rifle-pits in the open, the opposing skirmish, lines being perhaps four hundred yards apart, and our vedette posts—­we maintained them only at night—­being about sixty yards in advance of our pits, and always composed of three men for each post.  We found our three men numb