The disappointment of the morrow was a standing topic in camp and on the picket line for the ensuing three weeks. The only doubt that existed with the Court convened for the trial of the Brigadier appeared to be whether the numerous charges excelled most in frivolity or malice, as a slight reprimand for writing an unofficial account of an engagement,—an offence of which several members of the Court had, by their own confession, repeatedly been guilty,—was the sole result of its labor. His restoration to command, the presentation, and the return of the Colonels followed in rapid succession amid the rejoicings of officers and men.
—Amid the waste of meadow and woodland that characterized the face of that country, the houses of the farmers, or rather, to use the grandiloquent language of the inhabitants, "the mansions of the planters," were objects of peculiar interest. In their quaint appearance and general air of dilapidation, they stood as relics of the civilization of another age. Centuries, seemingly, of important events in the law of progress are crowded into years of our campaigning. The social status of a large country semi-civilized—whether you regard the intelligence of its people or the condition of its society—is being suddenly altered. The war accomplishes what well-designing men lacked nerve and ability to execute—emancipation. The blessings of a purer civilization will follow as naturally as sunshine follows storm.
And yet here and there these old buildings would be varied by one evidently framed upon a Yankee model. Such was what was widely known in the army as "the Moncure House." On a commanding site at the edge of a meadow several miles in length,
and that seemed from the abrupt bluffs that bordered it to have been once the bottom of a lake, this two-story weather-board frame was readily discernible. Its location made it a prominent point, too, upon the picket line, and it was favored above its fellows by daily and nightly occupancy by officers of the command. At this period the Regiment almost lived upon the picket line. An old wench, with several chalky complexioned children, whose paternal ancestor was understood to be under a musket of English manufacture perhaps, somewhere on the south side of the Rappahannock, occupied the kitchen of the premises. She was unceasing in reminding her military co-lodgers that the room used by them as head-quarters,—from the window of which you could take in at a glance the fine expanse of valley, threaded by a sparkling tributary of the Potomac,—was massa's study, and that massa was a preacher and had written a "right smart" lot of sermons in that very place. In the eyes of Dinah the room was invested with a peculiar sanctity. Not so with its present occupants, who could not learn that the minister, who was a large slaveholder, had remembered "those in bonds as bound with them," and who were quite content that artillery proclaiming "liberty throughout the land" in tones of thunder had driven away this vender of the divinity of the institution of slavery.
In this room, on seats rudely improvised, for its proper furniture had long since disappeared, some officers not on duty were passing a pleasant April afternoon, when their reveries of other days and rehashes of old camp yarns were interrupted by the sudden advent of an officer who a week previously had been detailed in charge of a number of men to form
part of an outer picket station some distance up the river. His face indicated news, and he was at once the centre of attraction.
"Colonel!" exclaimed he, without waiting to be questioned, "two of our best men have been taken prisoners, and the little Dutch Doctor——"
"What has happened to him?" from several at once.
"Was taken prisoner and released, but had his horse stolen."
His hearers breathed freer when they heard of the personal safety of the Doctor, and the officer continued—