d gone but a quarter of a
mile, when I discerned, through the gathering gloom, a black, misshapen
object, standing in the middle of the road. As it seemed motionless, I
ventured closer, when the thing resolved to a sutler's wagon, charred
and broken, and still smoking from the incendiaries' torch. Further on,
more of these burned wagons littered the way, and in one place two slain
horses marked the roadside. When I emerged upon the Hanover road, sounds
of shrieks and shot issued from the landing at "Garlic," and, in a
moment, flames rose from the woody shores and reddened the evening. I
knew by the gliding blaze that vessels had been fired and set adrift,
and from my place could see the devouring element climbing rope and
shroud. In a twinkling, a second light appeared behind the woods to my
right, and the intelligence dawned upon me that the cars and houses at
Tunstall's Station had been burned. By the fitful illumination, I rode
tremulously to the old head-quarters at Black Creek, and as I
conjectured, the depot and train were luridly consuming. The vicinity
was marked by wrecked sutler's stores, the embers of wagons, and toppled
steeds. Below Black Creek the ruin did not extend: but when I came to
White House the greatest confusion existed. Sutlers were taking down
their booths, transports were slipping their cables, steamers moving
down the stream. Stuart had made the circuit of the Grand Army to show
Lee where the infantry could follow.

CHAPTER XIV.

FEVER DREAMS IN WAR.

A subtle enemy had of late joined the Confederate cause against the
invaders. He was known as Pestilence, and his footsteps were so soft
that neither scout nor picket could bar his entrance. His paths were
subterranean,--through the tepid swamp water, the shallow graves of the
dead; and aerial,--through the stench of rotting animals, the nightly
miasms of bog and fen. His victims were not pierced, or crushed, or
mangled, but their deaths were not less terrible, because more
lingering. They seemed to wither and shrivel away; their eyes became at
first very bright, and afterward lustreless; their skins grew hard and
sallow; their lips faded to a dry whiteness; all the fluids of the body
were consumed; and they crumbled to corruption before life had fairly
gone from them.

This visitation has been, by common consent, dubbed "the Chickahominy
fever," and some have called it the typhus fever. The troops called it
the "camp fever," and it