we know would have been the same; a few more noble hearts
would have bled in vain, and song and story would but have found new
themes to tell the old, old tale--how willing brave men are to die for
what they believe to be right. Through long lines of toiling wagons,
artillery trains and tired men, we pushed on as rapidly as we could;
at a bad piece of road, at a creek or a muddy hill, the column
sometimes got cut in two by a portion getting through the wagons, the
train then closing, waiting upon a wagon mired down ahead.

At one of these halts for the brigade to close up and for the
regiments to report position, General Gary had halted at a large fire
made from the rails of some good farmer's fence by troops ahead of us,
and round it we all gathered, for the night was cold. The subject of
conversation with the brigade staff when we joined was, that Captain
M., the inspector, not being well, had, early in the night, halted at
a farm house and gone to bed, just to see how it would feel, putting
his horse in the farmer's stable; and when he roused himself to the
necessities of his position, and sought to ride with the rest, he
found his horse was gone. Some pressing party had gone that way.

I remembered, when I listened to the drowsy talk about the captain's
loss, that a couple of enterprising young fellows had reported some
horses at a farm house and gotten permission to go after them. They
had not long returned with their prizes; they, the horses, stood just
on the edge of light thrown by the fire against the darkness that rose
like a wall behind it, the hind-quarters of one, a large, leggy bay,
with stockings on his hind legs, could be seen from where we sat; one
of the orderlies, looking with sleepy eyes from the log on which he
was sitting at the horses, expressed himself to the effect that he
thought that "long-legged bay" looked about the hind-quarters a good
deal like the captain's missing charger. And so it proved. While the
captain "dallied at Capua," pressing the luxurious blanket of the
Virginia farmer, his horse, in camp parlance, was "lifted" by our
enterprising youth; and, much to their disgust, the captain reentered
into possession of his leggy war horse. They expressed themselves to
the effect that they would as soon have stolen his horse as any body
else's.

Again in the saddle, tramping through mud holes, splashing in ruts, we
worked our way amid the long line of wagons, troops and artillery,
until