d lingered near until the earth was
heaped about it. Then the drums beat the march, the wagons rolled over
it, and in half an hour no trace of it remained. So to this day, he lies
there undisturbed in the heart of the wilderness, in a grave which no man
knows. Others have railed at him,--have decried him and slandered
him,--but I remember him as he appeared on that last day of all, a brave
and loyal gentleman, not afraid of death, but rather welcoming it, and
the memory is a sweet and dear one. If he made mistakes, he paid for them
the uttermost penalty which any man could pay,--and may he rest in peace.

Of the remainder of that melancholy flight little need be said. We
struggled on through the wilderness, bearing our three hundred wounded
with us as best we could, and marking our path with their shallow graves,
as they succumbed one after another to the hardships of the journey. On
the twenty-second day of July we reached Fort Cumberland, and I learned
with amazement that Dunbar did not propose to stop here, although he had
placed near a hundred and fifty miles between him and the enemy, but to
carry his whole army to Philadelphia, leaving Virginia open to Indian and
French invasion by the very road which we had made. He alleged that he
must go into winter quarters, and that, too, though it was just the
height of summer. Colonel Washington ventured to protest against this
folly, but was threatened with court-martial, and came out of Dunbar's
quarters red with anger and chagrin.

And sure enough, on the second of August, Dunbar marched away with all
his effective men, twelve hundred strong, leaving at the fort all his
sick and wounded and the Virginia and Maryland troops, over whom he
attempted to exercise no control. I bade good-by to Orme and Allen and
such other of the officers as I had met. Colonel Burton took occasion to
come to me the night before he marched, and presented me with a very
handsome sword in token of his gratitude, as he said, for saving his
life,--an exploit, as I pointed out to him, small enough beside a hundred
others that were done that day.

The sword he gave me hangs above my desk as I write. I am free to confess
that I have performed no great exploits with it, and when I took it down
from its hook the other day to look at it, I found that it had rusted in
its scabbard.

CHAPTER XXI

VIRGINIA BIDS US WELCOME

"To my mind, there is only one thing to be done. That is to retire."