| "Only say you'll be mistress Brallaghan; |
| Don't say nay, charming Judy Callaghan." |
Lieutenant Root is in command of Loomis' battery. Just before reaching Logan's one of his provision wagons tumbled down a precipice, severely injuring three men and breaking the wagon in pieces.
7. Left Logan's mill before the sun was up. The rain continues, and the mud is deep. At eleven o'clock we reached what is known as Marshall's store, near which, until recently, the enemy had a pretty large camp. Halted at the place half an hour, and then moved four miles further on, where we found the roads impassable for our artillery and transportation.
Learning that the enemy had abandoned Big Springs and fallen back to Huntersville, the soldiers were permitted to break ranks, while Colonel Marrow and Major Keifer, with a company of cavalry, rode forward to the Springs. Colonel Nick Anderson, Adjutant Mitchell and I followed. We found on the road evidence of the recent presence of a very large force. Quite a number of wagons had been left behind. Many tents had been ripped, cut to pieces, or burned, so as to render them worthless. A large number of beef hides were strung along the road. One wagon, loaded with muskets, had been destroyed. All of which showed, simply, that before the rebels abandoned the place the roads had become so bad that they could not carry off their baggage.
The object of the expedition being now accomplished, we started back at three o'clock in the afternoon, and encamped for the night at Marshall's store.
8. Resumed the march early, found the river waist high, and current swift; but the men all got over safely, and we reached camp at one o'clock.
The Third has been assigned to a new brigade, to be commanded by Brigadier-General Dumont, of Indiana.
The paymaster has come at last.
Willis, my new servant, is a colored gentleman of much experience and varied accomplishments. He has been a barber on a Mississippi river steamboat, and a daguerreian artist. He knows much of the South, and manipulates a fiddle with wonderful skill. He is enlivening the hours now with his violin.
Oblivious to rain, mud, and the monotony of the camp, my thoughts are carried by the music to other and pleasanter scenes; to the cottage home, to wife and children, to a time still further away when we had no children, when we were making the preliminary arrangements for starting in the world together, when her cheeks were ruddier than now, when wealth and fame and happiness seemed lying just before me, ready to be gathered in, and farther away still, to a gentle, blue-eyed mother—now long gone—teaching her child to lisp his first simple prayer.