be
removed. An officer came dashing along the line, with the order to
"Strip for the fray! the enemy are coming down upon us!" The men stood
to arms, and again we waited for the attack, but none was made: our
cavalry had arrested the advance of the enemy. At night the firing died
away, and we pitched our tents and slept undisturbed.

In the afternoon of the 16th, the Seventy-seventh being on picket, a
horseman suddenly rushed in front of the head-quarter tents, saying that
the left of our picket line was attacked. It proved that a body of rebel
cavalry had discovered some wagons outside the picket line, and had made
a dash upon them. Our boys drove them back in haste, but the line was
strengthened in the expectation of a more important demonstration. This,
however, was the last we saw of the rebels on our part of the line.

Lee, finding himself too late to occupy the works around Centreville
before us, and hopeless of the success of any flank movement, turned his
army again towards the Rappahannock.

On the following morning, October 17th, our army started in pursuit, the
rain falling upon us in torrents, rendering the mud deep and the
marching hard. We halted that night at Gainesville, marched the next day
through New Baltimore, and reached Warrenton at night. On our march we
had passed the bodies of many of our cavalrymen, who had been killed in
the constant skirmishes which had been going on since our advance. Near
New Baltimore, where Kilpatrick's brigade had been forced back, the
bodies of his men lay scattered along the roadside, nearly all of them
stripped of their clothing by the rebels.

The army encamped in the vicinity of Warrenton; the Sixth corps
occupying a pleasant ridge just in front of the town. Here we remained a
fortnight.

Our first week at Warrenton was anything but agreeable. The cold
northwest winds swept through our camps, carrying chilly discomfort
everywhere. The men shivered over their log fires; but while the fitful
wind drove the smoke and fire into their faces, it froze their backs. At
our head-quarters, as we drew closely about our fire, dreading equally
the chilly winds and the provoking clouds of smoke, one of the party,
perhaps reading for the amusement of the others from a volume of Saxe's
poems, a stranger, had one chanced to drop in among us, would have
imagined that Saxe must have written most grievous tales of woe, and
that our hearts and eyes were all melted by the sad storie