The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-06-21
COLONEL YILLTERS BRIDE
HE FOUND HER WHILE ON IN EX-
 PEDIIION IN THE VAR.

They COurted and Then Became Man ant
 Wife.
 Colonel Villiers, of the Eleventh Ohio
 went out of service at the close of the
 war not only with the spread eagle or
 his shoulder, but honored by his imme.
 diate command and by all who knew
 him. He had proven brave and trust
 worthy, cool and calculating in time ot
 danger, quick to see an advantage and
 take it. He was martinet on the field
 and a school-boy in camp He was a
 musician, an actor, and an artist, an ex-
 pert swordsman, and could dance like
 a ballet-dancer; but, as he says himself,
 as he now sits in his studio and caress-
 es his long iron-gray moustache that
 always put us in mind of Corporal
 Haversack'' in the "Old Guard;'
 When I go to zee war I was zee
 moost unripe soldaire zat nevvare you
 'ave see.'
 The pumpkin in it's youth was proba-
 ply not greener. He had only been in
 this country about year, and was
 making frantic efforts to master "ze
 dam patois," when the war broke out,
 and he went with the Eleventh Ohio,
 first as private, then as corporal, ser
 geant, up to shoulder straps before the
 regiment reached Washington. They
 hardly had time to get acclimated to
 the Washington whiskey before they
 were ordered to join Rosecrans In West
 Virginia. There were stirring times there then, in which the Eleventh bore itself right nobly, losing many men and some officers, and in the spring of 1862 De Villiers found himself a major, with considerable wonder how he got there, By this time his greenness had all de- parted from him, and he was soldier all over''
 Fighting in West Virginia" said General Wallace, "was a heathenish kind of warfare, The -- battlefields all stood upon their edges. and your best chance lay in getting on the upper edge, so that you could slide, roll, tum- ble, or fall down on your enemy; but the devil of the thing was that the rebs knew the country best, and used to gen. erally succeed in getting the upper edge"
 In one of those wilderness expeditions, which were of frequent occurrence, Ma jor De Villiers, with four companies, was detailed to scale the side of a noun tain and hold it's summit while the larger portion of the command marched around the base to attack a large Con- federate camp on the other side The majors special duty was to hold the summit, that the rebels might not reach O. aroI, .oIO la ,,f1r out of danger, as they had persistent and annoying habit of doing. To avoid observation it was necessary to make the ascent at night; and as the usual thunder-storrns at that season averaged at least three in twenty-four hours the delights of climbing tip an unknown mountain-side, over rocks and fallen trees, through greenbriers. laurels and may be imagined
 About six o'clock on a summer even ing the major and his little command left camp away up in the Romney re- zion and struck into the low, rolling foothills in a southerly direction, which they were told, if persisted in, would bring them to the summit at the Five landmark that could be plainly seen from the valley The usu- al thunder storm came on before they had marched three miles, and met them just as they were entering the wilder ness. It was not long before, in dodg- | ng rocks, fallen trees, and other obsta- eles, the major and his command utter y lost themselves in the darkness, and | could only vaguely guess that they were proceeding in the right direction when they were sure they were climb | ng up hill instead of falling down
 The command rested a little while, l ind the rain and storm "let up" peroep- | ibly, Once more they started, as they | in the direction of the Five | Jhestnuts, and were happy in the idea | hat they were getting there because | he road grew momentarily worse and | he laurels and greenbriers thicker, un- il they finally marched square up against fault" in the mountain, a 'lace where nature seemed to have cut ! step couple of hundred feet perpen- licularly and of unknown length. The loughty little major swore fearfully, lnd sent men out on each flank to pros ,ect for path upward Sergeant Slut on and couple of men marched out learly half mile to the right, and VCLG 0Ldl tlSd py tHG DdIhlllS OI ct QOS, l md soon afterward by a boyish voice. eemingly coming from the solid rock at heir sides and inquiring:
 "Where be you folks gwine?"
 "That's just what we want to know" aid Sutton.
 "Be you Tank or Johnny?"
 "Yank."
 Maybe can show you out of the ills" "Young man, come over here and re- eve the mind of our major" When brought into the presence of he major, and light had been pro- ured, the young manor rather boy, ,r he was only about sixteen-said his | anne was Gammell, and that he had cen out that afternoon hunting for his ither who was hiding from the rebels. Why, there's no rebels on this side i the mountain" said the major and ' vo or three of his officers, all in the t brne breath.
 |"There's lots of 'em," said the boy, |outly. |'But we've seen no signs of them" |"There was plenty of 'em on the Eald Edge this afternoon, looking at s (u folks start out of camp. They're T 'd away most anywheres till the T prm is over. There's about two hun [ ed of lem sleepin' over at the coal-pit