By this time our ambulance drove up and we started for the battle-fields. “They talk mighty big,” said our Pennsylvania driver, who had heard the latter part of the conversation; “but in spite of all their big talk, they do things that down in old Lancaster we’d be mighty ’shamed of. Why, here the other night a fellow comes into our tavern there to buy a bottle of whisky. After he buys it, what does he do, but call in two or three others that had helped him pay for it, and borrow our glasses to take a drink out of his bottle. Why couldn’t the stingy cuss ’ave bought it by the drink like a gentleman, if he’d a know’d how a gentleman did?” The road led us away through a boundless common, waving with golden rod and covered with luxuriant grass. Every fence, for miles, was gone. Here and there solitary chimneys marked the site of an old “Virginia mansion,” and sometimes a little of the shrubbery had been spared about the ruins, but there were no other signs of human habitation. Neither were there any signs of the conflicts which have made the neighborhood memorable forever. Few trees were standing to show the scars of shells; the country seemed an absolute solitude; where once the roar of battle had rent the air, we had only the chirping notes of myriads of birds. Coming out on the brow of a little knoll, near which, in the hollow and across the brook was a double log-cabin, we stood beside the “Bull Run Monument.” It is a plain obelisk, built up of the sand-stone found in the neighborhood, roughly-faced down and cemented with coarse mortar. On its sides smooth places had been obtained by daubing on a little square of plaster. On these were painted the words “Erected, June 10, 1865, in honor of the Patriots who fell at Bull Run, July 21, 1861.” On either hand stretched the rolling country; below us murmured a little brook; away beyond the log-cabin at the bottom of the hill, a dark forest line shut in the view. A few yards from the monument stood half-a-dozen peach trees, loaded with excellent fruit, with which the driver took care to fill the lunch-basket.