At this point, a young officer, in a fit of bacchanal laughter,
staggered rather roughly against me.

"Begurpardon," he said, with an unsteady bow, "never ran against person
in life before."

I smiled assuringly, but he appeared to think the offence unpardonable.

"Do asshu a, on honor of gentlemand officer, not in custom of behaving
offensively. Azo! leave it to my friends. Entirely due to injuries
received at battle Drainesville."

As the other gentlemen laughed loudly here, I took it for granted that
my apologist had some personal hallucination relative to that
engagement.

"What giggling for, Bob?" he said; "honor concerned in this matter,
Will! Do asshu a, fell under Colonel's horse, and Company A walked over
small of my back." The other officers were only less inebriated and most
of them spoke boastfully of their personal prowess at Drainesville. This
was the only engagement in which the Pennsylvania Reserves had yet
participated, and few officers that I met did not ascribe the victory
entirely to their own individual gallantry. I inquired of these
gentlemen the route to the new encampments of the Reserves. They lay
five miles south of the turnpike, close to the Loudon and Hampshire
railroad, and along both sides of an unfrequented lane. They formed in
this position the right wing of the Army of the Potomac, and had been
ordered to hold themselves in hourly readiness for an advance. By this
time, my friend S. came up, and leaving him to restore his mortified
body, I crossed the road to the churchyard and peered through the open
door into the edifice. The seats of painted pine had been covered with
planks, and a sick man lay above every pew. At the ringing of my spurs
in the threshold, some of the sufferers looked up through the red eyes
of fever, and the faces of others were spectrally white. A few groaned
as they turned with difficulty, and some shrank in pain from the glare
of the light. Medicines were kept in the altar-place, and a doctor's
clerk was writing requisitions in the pulpit. The sickening smell of the
hospital forbade me to enter, and walking across the trampled yard, I
crept through a rent in the paling, and examined the huts in which the
Reserves had passed the winter. They were built of logs, plastered with
mud, and the roofs of some were thatched with straw. Each cabin was
pierced for two or more windows; the beds were simply shelves or berths;
a rough fireplace of stones and clay communic