e effect was grand
beyond all that I had witnessed. The country people gathered in fright
at the cottage doors, and the farm-dogs bayed dismally at the unwonted
scene. I refused to ride the blue roan again, but transferred my saddle
to a team horse that appeared to be given to a sort of equine
somnambulism, and once or twice attempted to lie down by the roadside.
At nine o'clock I set out with Fogg, who slipped a flask of spirits into
my haversack. Following the tardy movement of the teams, we turned our
faces toward Washington. I was soon wet to the skin, and my saddle
cushion was soaking with water. The streams crossing the road were
swollen with rain, and the great team wheels clogged on the slimy banks.
We were sometimes delayed a half hour by a single wagon, the storm
beating pitilessly in our faces the while. During the stoppages, the
Quartermaster's guards burned all the fence rails in the vicinity, and
some of the more indurated sat round the fagots and gamed with cards.

Cold, taciturn, miserable, I thought of the quiet farm, house, the ruddy
hearth-place, and the smoking supper. I wondered if the roguish eyes
were not a little sad, and the trim feet a little restless, the chessmen
somewhat stupid, and the good old house a trifle lonesome. Alas! the
intimacy so pleasantly commenced, was never to be renewed. With the
thousand and one airy palaces that youth builds and time annihilates, my
first romance of war towered to the stars in a day, and crumbled to
earth in a night.

At two o'clock in the morning we halted at Metropolitan Mills, on the
Alexandria and Leesburg turnpike. A bridge had been destroyed below, and
the creek was so swollen that neither artillery nor cavalry could ford
it. The meadows were submerged and the rain still descended in torrents.
The chilled troops made bonfires of some new panel fence, and stormed
all the henroosts in the vicinity. Some pigs, that betrayed their
whereabouts by inoportune whines and grunts, were speedily confiscated,
slaughtered, and spitted. We erected our tarpaulin in a ploughed field,
and Fogg laid some sharp rails upon the ground to make us a dry bed.
Skyhiski fried a quantity of fresh beef, and boiled some coffee; but
while we ate heartily, theorizing as to the destination of the corps,
the poor Captain was terribly shaken by his ague.

I woke in the morning with inflamed throat, rheumatic limbs, and every
indication of chills and fever. Fogg whispered to me at b