About him, in the night, was the tramp, tramp of other weary feet, the dim sight and sound of other weary bodies, cold, wet, thinly clad. Most of these men in the darkness thought, perhaps, of beings far away from these labyrinthine ridges and hollows. Many a soldier warmed his heart by the fires of home, dreamed as he marched of lover, wife, or child. But the thoughts were shot with pain and the dreams were bitter sweet. No man in a Southern army could take comfort in the thought that whatever of want and strain and boding might obtain where he moved, ragged, through the darkness, all was well at home—comfort there, warmth and food there, ease of heart there! Many knew that at home there was immediate suffering; others, that while the board was spread to-night, yet the dark sail of privation grew larger and larger. All knew that there was little, little ease of heart. Marching through the rainy night they carried with them, heavier than musket and haversack, the ache of all at home, as, upon this night, all at home felt cold and gaunt with the marching, marching armies. Yet the South at home managed to keep a high head and a ready smile, and the South in the field managed a jest, a laugh, a song. At home and in the field vast need and stress lifted the man, lifted the woman, lifted the child. Some one in the ——th Virginia, moving out to Chickasaw Bayou, began to sing jerkily— “Old Dan Tucker! You too late to get your supper—” The regiment climbed another of the innumerable mole-hills, all stumps of recently felled trees, and between, tenacious and horrible mud. The far side was worse than the near, and the bottom land, when finally they slipped and slid and wavered down upon it, proved mere quagmire. Here they found, deeply mired, two sections of artillery, bound as they were bound and struggling with the night. Gun wheels were sunken above the axle-tree; it seemed a mud burial, a question of never getting out. One heard straining gun teams, chattering negro drivers. There were torches, saffron blurs of light, hissed against by the rain, moving up and down like dejected will-o’-the-wisps. Infantry came up. “Halfway to China, aren’t you? Want us to lend a hand?” “Thank you, boys! William, tell those mules to pull harder.” “What are you doing with mules? Has it come to mule artillery?” “Well, it’s coming to so many things!—We’re Army of Tennessee—Stevenson’s division—come down to help hold the Mississippi River. Right big eel, isn’t it? Rushed through—two sections, Anderson’s battery—from Jackson. Horses yet on the road. Impressed mules.—Lieutenant Norgrove, tell those darkies there’s a watermelon field in front of them and ‘paterollers’ behind!—Pull there! pull!”