the right, taking
the Cavetown road. We crept along, continually halting, and reached
Cavetown at noon, some seven miles south-east of Lettersburg, our path
for the last mile being across fields and up hill to an extended
plateau overlooking the village. Here, while resting, we were overtaken
by a fierce thunder-storm. Six or eight miles in front of us to the
eastward, South Mountain stood out in bold relief; and the peals of
thunder reverberating against its sides made the valley ring again. The
place takes its name from a natural cave near the spot where we were
halted, and which afforded shelter to some of us from the shower. Here
a cow, as wise as ourselves in this particular, had taken refuge, and
kindly supplied us a few drops of milk. The art of extracting this
nutritious liquid we learned at the outset of our campaign, and found
the knowledge useful not unfrequently as we went along. Hard tack was
no such delicious viand as made us despise the free gift of the cow. We
found in the cave also what refreshed us almost as much--pure cold
water. It was held in honey-comb cells or cups formed in the rock,
twenty or more in number, holding three to six gallons each, the whole
together forming an irregular shelf along one side of the cavern. There
were dark passages and mysterious inner chambers, vaguely reported
to be half a mile in extent, but we had no time to make further
explorations. Before the shower ceased we were ordered to move, and
proceeded down the face of the hill to the selected halting ground on
the Hagerstown pike, a little out of the village. Here the column made
bivouac, and guns were planted commanding the road to the front.

The rain continued to fall, and in such torrents as to inundate the
camping ground. The air was filled with electricity, the crashing
thunder reverberating almost incessantly for half an hour through the
valley; and mournful to relate, some poor fellows of the Fifty-Sixth
Regiment, N.Y., who had imprudently taken refuge under a tree, were
struck by the electric fluid, and one of them killed.

The state of the ground compelled us to improvise dry beds, which we
did by taking fence rails and laying them side by side on the ground.
The idea of lying down to sleep on such a style of mattress was
preposterous to most of us; still we could not deny that it had the
first requisite of a bed, viz., dryness. Any one who has slept directly
upon ploughed, stony ground, as was often our lo