en
armed with cornstalks would have been equally efficient.

We had not long to wait until the smokestack of the Confederate
steamboat could be seen winding along as she tracked the serpentine
course of the river. As she neared the wharf the band on board struck up
that sweetest of tunes,--"Home, Sweet Home." Some of my companions
laughed, some threw their caps into the air, others hurrahed, while my
own emotions were expressed only by tears of joy that coursed down my
cheeks. When, however, the music glided into the exhilarating notes of
"Dixie" I joined in the cheering that mingled with the strain.

We arrived in Richmond on the 22d of March, the eighth day after we had
started. I was pained to notice in the city so many signs of
delapidation and poverty, and to learn that Confederate money had
depreciated to the point of sixty for one. The captain's salary that the
government owed me for two years was worth only about fifty dollars in
specie, which a friend in the treasury department advised me to collect
at once, inasmuch as he thought that the capital would be soon
evacuated. I took him for a timorous prophet, and told him I would wait
until I rejoined the army, when I should need it. I did not know, as he
did, the impoverished and critical condition of the Confederacy.

I was not exchanged, but "paroled for thirty days unless sooner
exchanged." I set out for the Northern Neck in company with Lieutenant
Purcell, of Richmond county, and Captain Stakes, of Northumberland. We
rode on a train as far as Hanover and then struck out afoot across the
country. Notwithstanding the fact that one of my companions limped on a
leg that had been wounded at Gettysburg and the other was a little lame
from frosted toes, it taxed all my powers to keep up with them. If I had
rejoiced to see the James, I was happier still to set foot once more
upon the bank of the Rappahannock. When we had crossed over we went to
the home of Lieutenant Purcell, where we spent the night, and the next
day, Monday, March 27, I arrived at home. I supposed that I should take
them by surprise, but somehow they had received intelligence of my
coming; and as I approached the house I found them all lined up in the
yard, white and black. "And they began to be merry."

I found John in the stable, having been ridden home by my faithful man,
Charles Wesley, who supposed that he had left me dead at Falling Waters.

On the 14th of April, Good Friday, when I was t