The village was filled with soldiers. The surrounding valley was filled with soldiers. From the valley, rude hills, only partially cleared, ran back to unbroken woods. There was Crow Valley and Sugar Valley, Rocky Face Mountain, Buzzard Roost and Mill Creek Gap, and many another pioneer-named locality. And in all directions there were camps of soldiers. Sometimes these boasted tents, but oftenest they showed clusters or streets of rude, ingenious huts, brown structures of bark and bough, above, between, and behind them foliage and bloom of the immemorial forest. Officers had log cabins, very neatly kept, with curls of blue smoke coming out of the mud chimneys. Headquarters was in the village, a white house with double porch, before it headquarters flag, and always a trim coming and going. At intervals the weary and worn engines, fed by wood, rarely repaired, brought over an unmended road a train of dilapidated cars and in them forage, munitions, handfuls of troops. But in the increasing confidence at Dalton, in the general invigoration and building-up, the tonic air, the running of the sap, the smiling of the world, even the East Tennessee, Virginia, and Georgia, and the Western and Atlantic, roadbed and rolling-stock and force of men, took on, as it were, an air of lively instead of grim determination. Outside of the town was the parade ground. Drill and music, music and drill, and once or twice a great review! Here came Johnston himself, erect, military, grey-mustached, with a quiet exterior and an affectionate heart, able and proud. With him rode his staff. Staff more than worshipped Johnston; it loved him. Here, too, came the lieutenant- and major-generals—Hardee, one of the best—and Hood the “fighter,” well-liked by the President—Patrick Cleburne and Cheatham and Stewart and Carter Stevenson and Walker, and many another good leader and true. Here the artillery, reorganized, was put through manœuvres, and Joe Wheeler’s cavalry trotted across, and in the morning light the bugles blew. It was a lovely Southern spring, with soft airs, with dogwood stars and flame-coloured azalea, with the fragrance of the grape and the yellow jessamine, with the song of many a bright bird, building in the wood. The Army of Tennessee, strong at Chickamauga, fallen ill at Missionary Ridge, convalescent through the winter, was now in health again. There was a small house, half hidden behind two huge syringa bushes. It had a bit of lawn no bigger than a handkerchief, and the bridal wreath and columbines and white phlox that bordered it made the handkerchief a lace one. Here lived Miss Sophia and Miss Amanda, gentlewomen who had seen better days, and here “boarded,” while the army was at Dalton, Désirée Cary.