couch, and how, at an alarm, he springs from it, almost instantly dressed
and armed.

Half an hour after tattoo the bugle rings out another sadly sweet strain,
that hath a dying sound.




CHAPTER IV.

A BITTER COLD MORNING AND A WARM AWAKENING--TROUBLE ALL ALONG THE LINE
--FIERCE CONFLICTS, ASSAULTS AND DEFENSE--PROLONGED AND DESPERATE STRUGGLE
ENDING WITH A SURRENDER.

The night had been the most intensely cold that the country had known for
many years. Peach and other tender trees had been killed by the frosty
rigor, and sentinels had been frozen to death in our neighborhood. The
deep snow on which we made our beds, the icy covering of the streams near
us, the limbs of the trees above us, had been cracking with loud noises
all night, from the bitter cold.

We were camped around Jonesville, each of the four companies lying on one
of the roads leading from the town. Company L lay about a mile from the
Court House. On a knoll at the end of the village toward us, and at a
point where two roads separated,--one of which led to us,--stood a
three-inch Rodman rifle, belonging to the Twenty-second Ohio Battery.
It and its squad of eighteen men, under command of Lieutenant Alger and
Sergeant Davis, had been sent up to us a few days before from the Gap.