midnight
He no longer hesitated to indulge in his war reminiscences , which necessarily brought his personal exploits under a calcium-light . These exploits usually emphasized his intimacy with some of the more dashing Southern leaders , such as Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart and Mosby . We found ourselves practically conscripted in the Confederate army . We were taken on long midnight rides through the passes of the Cumberland Mountains and hurled on some Federal outpost ; we were made -- a mere handful as we were -- to assault and carry most formidable earthworks ; we crossed dangerous fords , and bivouacked under boughs hung with weird gonfalons of gray moss , slit here and there by the edge of a star . Many a time we crawled stealthily through tangled vines and shrubs to the skirt of a wood , and across a fallen log sighted the Yankee picket whose bayonet point glimmered now and then far off in the moonlight . We spent a great many hours around the camp-fire counting our metaphorical scalps . One evening the colonel was especially exasperating with anecdotes of Stonewall Jackson , and details of what he said to the general and what the general said to him .