way over sundry cow-paths and
through by-lanes towards it, until at last, fatigued, and with hands
torn and bleeding from catching hold of roots and bushes to keep myself
from falling, I arrived at the summit of the hill. A young woman stood
in the door-way of the shanty, and I asked her if I could obtain a
dinner.

'Yes,' she said. 'Walk in and take a cheer.' She shoved a three-legged
stool towards me, and I took it.

She was about eighteen years of age, and had a very pretty
face,--though it was thickly covered with a coating of the sacred
soil,--a musical voice, and a small hand. Her eyes sparkled like
fire-flies on a June night, and her hair hung in wavy ringlets over what
would have been an 'alabaster brow,' had it not been for the
superabundance of _dirt_ above mentioned. She was the only good-looking
woman I saw in Western Virginia.

I took a seat at the table, and from a broken cup drank a few swallows
of tolerable coffee. As for the edibles, 'twas the same old story,--corn
bread and maple molasses, fried pork and onions. I staid there perhaps
fifteen minutes, and learned from my hostess that Webster was, previous
to the war 'a right smart village,' but that the male inhabitants had
mostly joined the rebel army, then at Phillippi. She, different from
most women I met in Virginia, expressed sympathy for the Union cause. It
seemed so strange to find a _Union_ woman in that part of the country, I
was induced to ask if Webster had the honor of being her birth-place.

'Oh no,' she said; 'I was born in 'Hio.'

That solved the whole mystery. I willingly paid the 'four bits' for my
dinner; and, as a storm was coming on, made all haste back to the
railroad, where we were getting ready to march on Phillippi, distance
thirteen Virginian, or about twenty _American_, miles.

'Fall in, Company Q!' shouted the orderly. 'Numbers one, two, three, and
four, do so and so; five, six, seven, and eight, do this, that, and the
other!' So at it we went; and never in my life did I perform a harder
afternoon's work than on Sunday, the 2d of June, 1861. It was a warm,
sultry day, and our morning's ride in the cars had been dusty and
fatiguing; and when, about dusk, a heavy rain-storm set in and drenched
us to the skin, we were sorry-looking objects indeed.

Although we had been in service six weeks, we had but just received our
uniforms that morning. My pants, when I put them on, were about six
inches too long, and the sleeves of