ke to shrink before the elements, and
doggedly grinned and bore it. But the greater part of us crouched to
the ground under the trees, hauling our rubber blankets over our heads
so as to shed the rain. Like the victims of the first deluge, we
suspected it would not be much of a shower, and were only less mistaken
than those wretched beings.

Over against the mountain wall before and above us there hung in
mid-air a vast sheet of water which the howling wind flapped to and fro
in the gorge terrifically; while the blinding lightning and crashing
thunder seemed to issue together from the mountain itself. The creek,
before clear and placid, quickly became turgid and agitated. It began
to creep up the banks. Presently a dark, strange-looking mass came
floating down--it was a soldier's knapsack! The rain fell, if possible,
in increased torrents. The stream continued to rise rapidly. Other
knapsacks came floating down. It was not long before the water stood
two feet above its former level. Would it keep on raining till it
flooded the road and us? For two hours the rain poured down with only
momentary abatement to renew itself as furiously as before. The calm
mountain brook had become a raging torrent, threatening the whole gorge
with overflow, carrying angrily down a stream of knapsacks, officers'
valises, etc. As we afterward found, the torrent had caught them where
they had been piled together; the rising water having isolated them and
put them beyond the reach of their owners.

There being no signs of the storm abating the order came to "Forward."
We fell in resignedly and even with good humor, having by this time got
pretty thoroughly soaked--every expedient of shelter failing; indeed we
had given up trying to keep dry, and many of us had taken to sauntering
up and down the road watching the baggage drift by, and laughing to see
one another's forlorn appearance. With trailing arms we marched
cheerily up the mountain, singing with infinite gusto, "Marching
along," "John Brown" and kindred airs--our choruses sounding out
grandly in that wild place, and amid that terrific storm. A little
further on we came to a manufacturing hamlet in a sort of cup of the
mountain, the stream on which the mill stood flowing over the edge of
the cup at one side as it were. At this point, or near it, we left the
Carlisle pike and took the mountain road on our right, following up the
course of the Mountain Creek. We now began to fall in with a