the road evidence of the recent presence of a very large force.
Quite a number of wagons had been left behind. Many tents had been
ripped, cut to pieces, or burned, so as to render them worthless. A
large number of beef hides were strung along the road. One wagon, loaded
with muskets, had been destroyed. All of which showed, simply, that
before the rebels abandoned the place the roads had become so bad that
they could not carry off their baggage.

The object of the expedition being now accomplished, we started back at
three o'clock in the afternoon, and encamped for the night at Marshall's
store.

8. Resumed the march early, found the river waist high, and current
swift; but the men all got over safely, and we reached camp at one
o'clock.

The Third has been assigned to a new brigade, to be commanded by
Brigadier-General Dumont, of Indiana.

The paymaster has come at last.

Willis, my new servant, is a colored gentleman of much experience and
varied accomplishments. He has been a barber on a Mississippi river
steamboat, and a daguerreian artist. He knows much of the South, and
manipulates a fiddle with wonderful skill. He is enlivening the hours
now with his violin.

Oblivious to rain, mud, and the monotony of the camp, my thoughts are
carried by the music to other and pleasanter scenes; to the cottage
home, to wife and children, to a time still further away when we had no
children, when we were making the preliminary arrangements for starting
in the world together, when her cheeks were ruddier than now, when
wealth and fame and happiness seemed lying just before me, ready to be
gathered in, and farther away still, to a gentle, blue-eyed mother--now
long gone--teaching her child to lisp his first simple prayer.

9. The day has been clear. The mountains, decorated by the artistic
fingers of Jack Frost, loom up in the sunshine like magnificent,
highly-colored, and beautiful pictures.

The night is grand. The moon, a crescent, now rests for a moment on the
highest peak of the Cheat, and by its light suggests, rather than
reveals, the outline of hill, valley, cove and mountain.

The boys are wide awake and merry. The fair weather has put new spirit
in them all, and possibly the presence of the paymaster has contributed
somewhat to the good feeling which prevails.

Hark! This from the company quarters:

"Her golden hair in ringlets fair;
Her eyes like diamonds shining;
Her slend