"Av it would have been proper for a corporal, I would have asked the Gineral what Johnny Reb would do while we were taching him all that. Thim's the Gineral's exact words, for I paid particular attention. I put them thegither with what I had heard from a Wisconsin boy, and I got the whole history of that fight."
"Let's have it," shouted the crowd, now considerably increased, "at once!"
"Well, you see, they were sent forward to reconnoitre, as the Gineral said, and there was a Wisconsin regiment of bear hunters and the like, and a Pennsylvania regiment of deer hunters and Susquehannah raftsmen pretty well forward. These Wisconsin chaps, in dead earnest, brought their rifles along all the way from Wisconsin, and, like the Susquehannah fellows, they couldn't kape hands off the trigger if there was any game about.
"Well, they got to Falling Waters without stirring up anything; you recollect, Lieutenant, where that rebel officer's house was burned down, and then the battery that was along with them, seeing some suspicious-looking Grey Backs dodging in and out of a wood, let them have a few round of shells just to see whether they were in force or not, according to orders. The Rebs made tracks for a low piece of ground behind a ridge, and then formed line of battle. Our men, with a yell, went forward, and when they saw the Rebs in line, these two Colonels, thinking they had been sent out to fight, and that their men didn't carry guns for nothing, ordered them to fire; and then they ordered them to load again, in order to relave their hips as much as possible from the load of ammunition; and then they fired again; and then, gittin' excited, and thinkin' this work too slow, and that it
wouldn't do to take such bright bayonets home, they ordered a charge, and cheering, yelling, and howling, our boys went at the Rebs. The Rebs didn't stand to meet them, but fell back behind a barn. The batteries burned that,—and then they tried to form line again, but no use. As soon as our fellows gave the yell, they were off like all possessed. They had prepared to run by tearing the fences down; and then it was trying to form line, and breaking as soon as our fellows howled a little, all the way for five long miles to Martinsburg; and the last our boys saw of the Rebs was their straight coat-tails at the south end of the town. And that was the whole battle of Falling Waters; and may be Ould Patterson wouldn't have got to Martinsburg if them Colonels had reported the Rebs in force, and not got excited.
"But how did you hear all this? You forget that part of it."
"And couldn't you let that go? I thought I could concale that.
"Well, you know, Lieutenant, our ould Colonel boarded at the Brick Hotel, along the Railroad, above where the long strings of locomotives were burned, as the Gineral says, by our 'misguided southern friends;' and I was about there considerably on duty. One afternoon, a jolly-looking little chap, one of the Wisconsin boys, and one after my own heart—and he proved it, too, by trating me to several drinks—came along with a Rebel Artillery officer's coat under his arm. And we looked at the coat, and talked and drank, and drank and talked, until the Wisconsin chappy put it on, just to show me how the Rebel officer looked in it. It was a fine grey, trimmed with gold lace and scarlet, and the Wisconsin chappy looked gay in it, barring the sleeves were
several inches too long, and the waist buttons came down nearly a foot too far, and it was too big round the waist. And he showed me after every drink what he did and what the Officer did,—and, to tell the plain truth, we got a drop too much,—and the Wisconsin chappy got turning back-hand springs against the side of the hotel, and I tried to do the same, to the great sport of the crowd. But it didn't last long. A corporal's guard took—or rather carried—us to the guard-house, and towards morning, when we sobered up, he tould me the whole story."