In going into camp, Louis soon learned that a regular rule was adopted. The four regiments forming a division were first placed in a large square, one regiment to each corner, or quarter, with the tent of the brigadier-general commanding in front of the whole. The grand square thus divided, each regiment was divided into divisions of two companies each, one company placed in a line behind the second company, the two about ten or fifteen yards apart, with each company divided from that next to it by about the same distance. When thus stationed, the soldiers were ordered to stack arms and unsling knapsacks, and then began the work of building up the tents in long rows behind the stacked guns, the officers’ quarters being placed on a line with the others, but either on the outside of all or in the “cross streets” between companies. Before starting out on the campaign each soldier had been supplied with a bit of strong canvas about five feet square, having on the edges rows of strong buttons and button-holes. Usually four of these pieces of canvas were buttoned together, making a sheet ten feet square. This square was now thrown over a ridgepole, sometimes a straight branch of a tree, sometimes a fence-rail and then again nothing but a musket with bayonet attached, the ridgepole held up at each end by a short post driven into the ground. Thus “hoisted,” the canvas was stretched out as far as possible upon either side and pinned to the ground with sharpened sticks, after which a fifth patch of cloth was buttoned fast over the back end, when the “dog tent,” as all the soldiers called them, was ready for occupancy. Under such a covering would sleep, closely huddled together, the five men who had contributed their patches of cloth. Sometimes a sixth man would join the crowd or mess, when the weather was cold, and then the “dog” would have a “front door.” “Gosh, this ain’t no palace, is it?” queried Nathan Hornsby, who was one of the members of the mess to which Louis belonged. “It’s all right enough in good weather, but creation help us if it storms.” “I wonder how long we’ll stay here?” queried Louis. “We’ll have to stay until all of the troops come down from Alexandria, I suppose,” said Harry, who also belonged to the mess, and who now sat on his knapsack in the shelter. “I heard somebody say that the last of the transports wouldn’t be in for a week yet.” “If we stay here long the rebs will steal a march on us,” put in Moses Blackwell, who was vainly trying to light some green tobacco picked up at a ruined storehouse on the route hither. “Of course, it’s only natural they should fight like wildcats to keep us out of Richmond.” “I think myself some of the troops ought to be sent ahead, at least as far as Yorktown,” said Louis. “That place ought to make a splendid base for supplies, being right along the York River, where our ships of war could cover it all the time.”