"Yes," resumed Bill, "the same. It stands near his cook tent, and while his darkies were serving up French cookery, the Judge Advocate did the work allotted him in endeavoring to justify by the trial, in some slight manner, the General's outrageous conduct. I heard that Tom said, that after the Judge Advocate had asked that he be vouched for, and the Colonel became indignant, the Judge Advocate said somewhat blandly,
"'You must remember, Colonel, that this is not one of your ordinary Courts of Justice.'
"'That it is not a Court of Justice,' retorted the Colonel, 'is very apparent.'
"Both were put through in a hurry, at any rate. The different members of the Court said that they all had marching orders, and they had no sooner left the Sibley than they were upon horseback and on the gallop towards their different commands. Our Doctor had detailed an ambulance to take the Colonels in the rear of the Division. Old Pigey, in his usual morning survey of the premises, saw it in front of the Sibley, and sent an Orderly to take the rather lively, good-looking bays that were in it and exchange them for the old rips that haul the ambulance his cooks ride in. But we did not move then, although they say we will certainly to-morrow."
That inevitable "they say," the common prefix to rumors in camp as well as civil life, had given Bill correct information. For next morning, in spite of the lowering sky, the camps were all astir with busy
life, and during the course of the forenoon column after column trudged along over the already soft roads in a south-westerly direction. The movement was the mad desperation of a Commander of undaunted energy. A vain effort to appease that most capricious of masters, popular clamor. The rains descended, and that grand army of the Potomac literally floundered in the mud.
In an old field, thickly grown with young pines, very near the farthest point reached in the march, our Regiment rested towards the close of the last day of the advance, or to speak more truly, attempted advance. Fatigued with the double duty of struggling with the mud and corduroying the roads, the repose was heartily welcome.
"It does a fellow good to feel a little frisky,"
sang, or rather shouted, a little Corporal, whom we have met before in these pages, as he made ridiculous efforts to infuse life into heels clodded with mud.