March 12 — We left Bartonsville at eight this morning and moved slowly up the pike to a hill half a mile south of Newtown, where we are still camped this evening. To-day we had a little panic in camp, which came very near bordering on a stampede among the wagoners. Cavalrymen and some of the artillery were mixed in it too, Company Q in general. It was caused by a hasty report from the front that the Yankees were rapidly advancing in force and that they were already near our camp. The alarm was partly false, however. A Yankee scouting party drove our pickets in and approached to within one mile of our camp, and would undoubtedly have come nearer but the ever watchful and gallant Ashby at the head of his troopers with drawn sabers charged them and drove them back to Kernstown.
Some of our cavalrymen captured a drummer boy and brought him to camp. It is something unusual to find a drummer so far away from the infantry. It looks a little as if he was operating with the cavalry, either trying to deceive somebody or else the Yanks think that Ashby’s men are as easily frightened as old women. If they think the latter, they will learn something beneficial to their well-being before they get two months older.
Colonel Ashby is a splendid horseman, and as I looked at him to-day when he started to charge at the head of his column, riding superbly, with drawn saber flashing in the sunlight, and his long jetty beard floating in the wind like wavy silk as he dashed by, he was a striking representation of a princely knight of the Middle Ages, and the sight made me feel a little fightish myself.
