ce,--sharing our blankets and
tobacco,--and continued so until the end.

Another friend I also found in young Harry Marsh, a son of Colonel Henry
Marsh, who owned a plantation some eight or ten miles above the Frederick
ferry, and a cousin of my aunt. Colonel Marsh had stopped one day at
Riverview, while on his way home from Hampton, and had made us all
promise to return his visit, but so many affairs had intervened that the
promise had never been kept. The boy, who was scarce nineteen, had
secured a berth as ensign in Peyronie's company, and he came frequently
with his captain to our quarters to listen with all his ears to our
stories of the Fort Necessity affair. He was a fresh, wholehearted
fellow, and though he persisted in considering us all as little less than
heroes, was himself heroic as any, as I was in the end to learn. We were
a hearty and good-tempered company, and spent our evenings together most
agreeably, discussing the campaign and the various small happenings of
the camp. But as Spiltdorph shrewdly remarked, we were none of us so
sanguinary as we had been a year before. I have since observed that the
more a man sees of war, the less his eagerness for blood.

From Lieutenant Allen I kept aloof as much as possible, and he on his
part took no notice whatever of me. Some rumor of my affair with him had
got about the camp, but as neither of us would say a word concerning it,
it was soon forgot in the press of greater matters. Whatever Allen's
personal character may have been, it is not to be denied that he labored
with us faithfully, though profanely, drilling us up and down the camp
till we were near fainting in the broiling sun, or exercising us in arms
for hours together, putting us through the same movement a hundred times,
till we had done it to his satisfaction. We grumbled of course, among
ourselves, but at the end of another fortnight the result of his work
began to be apparent, and Sir Peter Halket, when he inspected us just
before starting for Fort Cumberland, as the fortification at Will's Creek
was named, expressed himself well pleased with the progress we had made.

For the order to advance came at last, and after a two weeks' weary
journey along the road which had been widened for the passage of wagons
and artillery, we reached our destination and went into quarters there.
The barracks were much better appointed than were the ones at Winchester,
for this was to be the rendezvous of the entire