Our course now lay through Maryland, and we performed endless marches and countermarches over turnpikes and through field and forest.

After crossing South Mountain,—but stop, I just must tell you about that, it will take but a paragraph or two. South Mountain Pass we entered one July evening, after a drenching rain, on the Middletown side, and marched along through that deep mountain gorge, with a high cliff on either side, and a delightful stream of fresh water flowing along the road; emerging on the other side at the close of day. Breaking off the line of march by the right flank, we suddenly crossed the stream, and were ordered up the mountain-side in the gathering darkness. We climbed very slowly at first, and more slowly still as the darkness deepened and the path grew steeper and more difficult. At about nine o'clock, orders were given to "sleep on arms," and then, from sheer fatigue, we all fell sound asleep, some lying on the rocks, some sitting bolt upright against the trees, some stretched out at full length on beds of moss or clumps of bushes.

What a magnificent sight awaited us the next morning! Opening our eyes at peep o' day, we found ourselves high up on top of a mountain-bluff overlooking the lovely valley about Boonesboro. The rains were past; the sun was just beginning to break through the clouds; great billows of mist were rolling up from the hollows below, where we could catch occasional glimpses of the movements of troops,—cavalry dashing about in squads, and infantry marching in solid columns. What may have been the object of sending us up that mountain, or what the intention in ordering us to fell the trees from the mountain-top and build breastworks hundreds of feet above the valley, I have never learned. That one morning amid the mists of the mountain, and that one grand view of the lovely valley beneath, were to my mind sufficient reason for being there.

Refreshed by a day's rest on the mountain-top, we march down into the valley on the 10th, exhilarated by the sweet, fresh mountain air, as well as by the prospect, as we suppose, of a speedy end being put to this cruel war. For we know that the enemy is somewhere crossing the swollen Potomac back into Virginia, in a crippled condition, and we are sure he will be finally crushed in the next great battle, which cannot now be many hours distant. And so we march leisurely along, over turnpikes and through grain-fields, on the edge of one of which, by and by, we halt in line of battle, stack arms, and, with three cheers, rush in a line for a stake-and-rider fence, with the rails of which we are to build breastworks. It is wonderful how rapidly that Maryland farmer's fence disappears! Each man seizing a rail, the fence literally walks off, and in less than fifteen minutes it reappears in the shape of a compact and well-built line of breastworks.

But scarcely is the work completed when we are ordered into the road again, and up this we advance a half-mile or so, and form in line on the left of the road and on the skirt of another wheat-field. We are about to stack arms and build a second line of works, when—

Z-i-p! z-i-p! z-i-p!

Ah! It is music we know right well by this time! Three light puffs of smoke rise yonder in the wheat-field, a hundred yards or so away, where the enemy's pickets are lying concealed in the tall grain. Three balls go singing merrily over my head—intended, no doubt, for the lieutenant, who is acting-adjutant, and who rides immediately in front of me, with a bandage over his forehead, but who is too busy forming the line to give much heed to his danger.

"We'll take you out o' that grass a-hopping, you long-legged rascals!" shouts Pointer, as the command is given:

"Deploy to right and left as skirmishers,"—while a battery of artillery is brought up at a gallop, and the guns are trained on a certain red barn away across the field, from which the enemy's sharpshooters are picking off our men. Bang! Hur-r-r! Boom! One, two, three, four shells go crashing through the red barn, while the shingles and boards fly like feathers, and the sharpshooters pour out from it in wild haste. The pickets are popping away at one another out there along the field and in the edge of the wood beyond; the enemy is driven in and retreats, but we do not advance, and the expected battle does not come off after all, as we had hoped it would. For in the great war-council held about that time, as we afterwards learned, our generals, by a close vote, have decided not to risk a general engagement, but to let the enemy get back into Virginia again, crippled, indeed, but not crushed, as every man in the ranks believes he well might be.

As we step on the swaying pontoons to recross the Potomac into old Virginia, there are murmurs of disappointment all along the line.

"Why didn't they let us fight? We could have thrashed them now, if ever we could. We are tired of this everlasting marching and countermarching up and down, and we want to fight it out and be done with it." But for all our feelings and wishes, we are back again on the south side of the river, and the column of blue soon is marching along gayly enough among the hills and pleasant fields about Waterford.

We did not go very fast nor very far those hot July days, because we had very little to eat. Somehow or other our provision trains had lost their reckoning, and in consequence we were left to subsist as best we could. We were a worn, haggard-looking, hungry, ragged set of men. As for me—out at knee and elbow, my hair sticking out in tufts through holes in the top of my hat, my shoes in shreds, and my haversack empty—I must have presented a forlorn appearance indeed. Fortunately, however, blackberries were ripe and plentiful. All along the road and all through the fields, as we approached Warrenton, these delicious berries hung on the vines in great luscious clusters. Yet blackberries for supper and blackberries for breakfast give a man but little strength for marching under a July sun all day long. So Corporal Harter and I thought, as we sat one morning in a clover-field where we were resting for the day, busy boiling a chicken at our camp-fire.

"Where did you get that chicken, Corporal?" said I.

"Well, you see, Harry, I didn't steal her, and I didn't buy her, neither. Late last night, while we were crossing that creek, I heard some fellow say he had carried that old chicken all day since morning, and she was getting too heavy for him, and he was going to throw her into the creek; and so I said I'd take her, and I did, and carried her all night, and here she is now in the pan, sizzling away, Harry."

"I'm afraid, Corporal, this is a fowl trick."

"Fair or fowl, we'll have a good dinner, any way."

With an appetite ever growing keener as we caught savory whiffs from the steaming mess-pan, we piled up the rails on the fire and boiled the biddy, and boiled, and boiled, and boiled her from morn till noon, and from noon to night, and couldn't eat her then, she was so tough!

"May the dogs take the old grizzle-gizzard! I'm not going to break my teeth on this old buzzard any more," shouted the corporal, as he flung the whole cartilaginous mass into a pile of brush near by. "It was a fowl trick, after all, Harry, wasn't it?"

Thus it chanced that, when we marched out of Warrenton early one sultry summer morning, we started with empty stomachs and haversacks, and marched on till noon with nothing to eat. Halting then in a wood, we threw ourselves under the trees, utterly exhausted. About three o'clock, as we lay there, a whole staff of officers came riding down the line—the quartermaster-general of the Army of the Potomac and staff, they said it was. Just the very man we wanted to see! Then broke forth such a yell from hundreds of famished men as the quartermaster-general had probably never heard before nor ever wished to hear again:

"Hard-tack!"

"Coffee!"

"Pork!"

"Beef!"

"Sugar!"

"Salt!"

"Pepper!" "Hard-tack! Hard-tack!"

The quartermaster and staff put their spurs to their horses and dashed away in a cloud of dust, and at last, about nightfall, we got something to eat.

By the way, this reminds me of an incident that occurred on one of our long marches; and I tell it just to show what sometimes is the effect of short rations.

It was while we were lying up at Chancellorsville in an immense forest that our supply of pork and hard-tack began to give out. We had, indeed, carried with us into the woods eight full days' rations in our knapsacks and haversacks; but it rained in torrents for several days, so that our hard-tack became mouldy, the roads were impassable, transportation was out of the question, and we were forced to put ourselves on short allowance.

"I wish I had some meat, Harry," said Pete Grove, anxiously inspecting the contents of his haversack; "I'm awful hungry for meat."

"Well, Pete," said I, "I saw some jumping around here pretty lively a while ago. Maybe you could catch it." "Meat jumping around here? Why what do you mean?"

"Why frogs, to be sure—frogs, Pete. Did you never eat frogs?"

"Bah! I think I'd be a great deal hungrier than I am now, ever to eat a frog! Ugh! No, indeed! But where is he? I'd like the fun of hunting him, anyhow."

So saying, he loaded his revolver, and we sallied forth along the stream, and Pete, who was a good marksman, in a short time had laid out Mr. Froggy at the first shot.

"Now, Pete, we'll skin him, and you shall have a feast fit for a king."

So, putting the meat into a tin cup with a little water, salt, and pepper, boiling it for a few minutes, and breaking some hard-tack into it when done, I set it before him. I need hardly say that when he had once tasted the dish he speedily devoured it, and when he had devoured it, he took his revolver in hand again, and hunted frogs for the rest of that afternoon.

Drum and fife have more to do with the discipline of an army than an inexperienced person would imagine. The drum is the tongue of the camp. It wakes the men in the morning, mounts the guard, announces the dinner-hour, gives a peculiar charm to dress-parade in the evening, and calls the men to quarters with its pleasant tattoo at night. For months, however, we had had no drums. Ours had been lost, with our knapsacks, at Gettysburg. [And I will here pause to say that if any good friend across the border has in his possession a snare-drum with the name and regiment of the writer clearly marked on the inside of the body, and will return the same to the owner thereof, he will confer no small favor, and will be overwhelmed with an ocean of thanks!]

We did not know how really important a thing a drum is until, one late September day, we were ordered to prepare for a dress-parade—a species of regimental luxury in which we had not indulged since the early days of June.

"Major, you don't expect us drummer-boys to turn out, do you?"

"Certainly. And why not, my boy?"

"Why, we have no drums, Major!" "Well, your fifers have fifes, haven't they? We'll do without the drums; but you must all turn out, and the fifers can play."

So when we stood drawn up in line on the parade-ground among the woods, and the order was given:

"Parade rest! Troop, beat off!"

Out we drummers and fifers wheeled from the head of the line, with three shrill fifes screaming out the rolls, and started at a slow march down the line, while every man in the ranks grinned, and we drummer-boys laughed, and the officers joined us, until at last the whole line, officers and men alike, broke out into loud haw-haws at the sight. The fifers couldn't whistle for laughing, and the major ordered us all back to our places when only half down the line, and never even attempted another parade until a full supply of brand-new drums arrived for us from Washington.

Then the major picked out mine for me, I remember, and it proved to be the best in the lot.