After a little more talk she turned over, and I presently heard a comfortable snore, but I lay awake a long time, my eyes riveted on the satchel containing fragments of John. Then I began to think of seeing Dan in the morning, and fell asleep feeling how good it was that he was safe and sound, all his bones together and not scattered around like poor John’s. I reached Culpeper Court-house the next afternoon about four o’clock. Dan met me looking tired and shabby, and as soon as he had me settled went back to camp. “I’ll come to see you as often as I can get leave,” he said when he told me good-by. “We may be quartered here for some time--long enough for us to get ourselves and our horses rested up, I hope; but I’m afraid I can’t see much of you. Hardly worth the trouble of your coming, is it, little woman?” “Oh, Dan, yes,” I said cheerfully; “just so you are not shot up! It would be worth the coming if I only got to see you through a car window as the train went by.” A few days after my arrival a heavy snow-storm set in. As my trunk had not yet come, I was still in the same dress in which I had left Petersburg, and, though we were all willing enough to lend, clothes were so scarce that borrowing from your neighbor was a last resort. I suffered in silence for a week before my trunk arrived, and then it was exchanging one discomfort for another, for my flannels were so tight from shrinkage and so worn that I felt as if something would break every time I moved. During this snow-storm the roads were lined with Confederate troops marching home footsore and weary from Maryland. Long, hard marches and bloody battles had been their portion. In August they had come, after their work at Seven Pines, Cold Harbor, and Malvern Hill, to drive Pope out of Culpeper, where he was plundering. They had driven him out and pressed after, fighting incessantly. Near Culpeper there had been the battle of Cedar Mountain, where Jackson had defeated Pope and chased him to Culpeper Court-house. Somewhat farther from Culpeper had been fought the second battle of Manassas, and, crowding upon these, the battles of Germantown, Centreville, Antietam--more than I can remember to name. Lee’s army was back in Culpeper now with Federal troops at their heels, and McClellan, not Pope, in command. Civilians, women, children, and slaves feared Pope; soldiers feared McClellan--that is, as much as Lee’s soldiers could fear anybody. I found our tired army in Culpeper trying to rest and fatten a little before meeting McClellan’s legions. Then--I am not historian enough to know just how it happened--McClellan’s head fell and Burnside reigned in his stead. Better and worse for our army, and no worse for our women and children, for Burnside was a gentleman even as McClellan was and as Pope was not, and made no war upon women and children until the shelling of Fredericksburg. CHAPTER V I MEET BELLE BOYD AND SEE DICK IN A NEW LIGHT