were not there on the other side; some of the men swearing
they could tell her report, and even going to the rash length
of offering bets on her presence.

By one of those curious coincidences, as strange as anything in fiction,
a new general had, in 1864, come down across the Rapidan to take Richmond,
and the old battery had found a hill-top in the line in which Lee's army
lay stretched across "the Wilderness" country to stop him. The day,
though early in May, was a hot one, and the old battery, like most others,
had suffered fearfully. Two of the guns had had wheels cut down by shells
and the men had been badly cut up; but the fortune of the day
had been with Lee, and a little before nightfall, after a terrible fight,
there was a rapid advance, Lee's infantry sweeping everything before it,
and the artillery, after opening the way for the charge,
pushing along with it; now unlimbering as some vantage-ground was gained,
and using canister with deadly effect; now driving ahead again so rapidly
that it was mixed up with the muskets when the long line of breastworks
was carried with a rush, and a line of guns were caught still hot from their
rapid work. As the old battery, with lathered horses and smoke-grimed men,
swung up the crest and unlimbered on the captured breastwork,
a cheer went up which was heard even above the long general yell
of the advancing line, and for a moment half the men in the battery
crowded together around some object on the edge of the redoubt,
yelling like madmen. The next instant they divided, and there was the Cat,
smoke-grimed and blood-stained and still sweating hot from her last fire,
being dragged from her muddy ditch by as many men as could get hold
of trail-rope or wheel, and rushed into her old place beside the Eagle,
in time to be double-shotted with canister to the muzzle, and to pour it
from among her old comrades into her now retiring former masters. Still,
she had a new carriage, and her record was lost, while those of the other guns