Rebels between here and Lee's Army can't prevent Sherman from
going just where he pleases. Why, we've quit fightin' 'em except with
the Bummers advance. We haven't had to go into regular line of battle
against them for I don't know how long. Sherman would like anything
better than to have 'em make a stand somewhere so that he could get a
good fair whack at 'em."

No one can imagine the effect of all this upon us. It was better than a
carload of medicines and a train load of provisions would have been.
From the depths of despondency we sprang at once to tip-toe on the
mountain-tops of expectation. We did little day and night but listen for
the sound of Sherman's guns and discuss what we would do when he came.
We planned schemes of terrible vengeance on Barrett and Iverson, but
these worthies had mysteriously disappeared--whither no one knew. There
was hardly an hour of any night passed without some one of us fancying
that he heard the welcome sound of distant firing. As everybody knows,
by listening intently at night, one can hear just exactly what he is
intent upon hearing, and so was with us. In the middle of the night boys
listening awake with strained ears, would say:

"Now, if ever I heard musketry firing in my life, that's a heavy skirmish
line at work, and sharply too, and not more than three miles away,
neither."

Then another would say:

"I don't want to ever get out of here if that don't sound just as the
skirmishing at Chancellorsville did the first day to us. We were lying
down about four miles off, when it began pattering just as that is doing
now."

And so on.

One night about nine or ten, there came two short, sharp peals of
thunder, that sounded precisely like the reports of rifled field pieces.
We sprang up in a frenzy of excitement, and shouted as if our throats
would split. But the next peal went off in the usual rumble, and our
excitement had to subside.

CHAPTER LXXVII.

FRUITLESS WAITING FOR SHERMAN--WE LEAVE FLORENCE--INTELLIGENCE OF THE
FALL OF WILMINGTON COMMUNICATED TO US BY A SLAVE--THE TURPENTINE REGION
OF NORTH CAROLINA--WE COME UPON A REBEL LINE OF BATTLE--YANKEES AT BOTH
ENDS OF THE ROAD.

Things had gone on in the way described in the previous chapter until
past the middle of February. For more than a week every waking hour was
spent in anxious expectancy of Sherman--listening for the far-off rattle
of his guns--straining our ears to catch the sullen boom of h