ain's order about this in our
preparations, and not be up half the night."

"Even so, Tom."

George was correct; as to a move at least, for early dawn saw the
Division and a detachment from another Division, en route to the river.
There was the usual quiet in the camps along which they passed, showing
that George was mistaken as to the move being general. The troops
marching through a winding and wooded defile, passed the deservedly well
known Brigade of General Meagher. "Here's Ould Ireland Boys," said the
little Irish Corporal, pointing, as his face glowed with pride, to the
flag adorned with "The Harp of Ould Ireland, and the Shamrock so green,"
the emblems of the Emerald Isle.

"Their General is an Irishman thrue to the sod, none of your rinegade
spalpeens like John Mitchel--fighting for slave-holders in Ameriky, and
against the Lords and Dukes in Ould Ireland, and the slave-holders as
Father Mahan tould me the worst of the two, more aristocratic,
big-feeling, and tyrannical than the English nobility. He said, too,
that the blackguard could never visit the ould sod again unless he
landed in the night-time, and hid himself by day in a bog up to his
eyes, and even then the Father said he believed the blissed mimory of
St. Patrick,

'Who drove the Frogs into the Bogs,
And banished all the Varmint,'

would clean him out after the rist of the varmin."

"Three cheers for the Irish Brigade" greeted the Corporal's remarks.

The troops crossed with difficulty and delay at the only ford--and
wondered with reason at the activity of the Rebels in having transported
across not only their army and baggage, but hundreds if not thousands of
their dead and wounded. The road winding around the high rocks on the
Virginia side, must have been in more peaceful times a favorite drive
for the gentry of the neighborhood. Shepherdstown itself adorns a most
commanding position. On the occasion of this Union visit its inhabitants
appeared intensely Secesh. Not so in the early history of the rebellion;
when Patterson's column "dragged its slow length along" through the
valley of the Shenandoah. Scouting parties then saw Union flags from
many a window. True, they streamed from dwellings owned by the
merchants, mechanics, and laborers, the real muscle of the country; but
this was true of most of the towns of the Border States, and more early
energetic action in affording these classes protection would have
secured us