"While I was on a brief business visit to the North, the regiment had joined the advance, and on my return I found it out in the neighborhood of Warrenton. After waiting a few days in what remained of our old camp, I found an opportunity of going out to the front with Captain Cook, of our regiment, and a small squad of men. The ride out to Rappahannock Station, where our regiment was last heard from, was full of novelty and interest to one who had never been on a long march before. Captain Cook is a gentleman as well as a good soldier, and his familiarity with the historic region through which we passed made him an exceedingly agreeable companion. The evening of the second day of our journey, which was Sunday, found us considerably beyond Manassas. A dismantled house stood on the brow of a hill in a grove some distance from the road. We rode up to it and concluded to spend the night there. Though it was half ruinous, without windows and doors, and the floor covered with rubbish of every description, but a few moments sufficed to make it sufficiently comfortable for a soldier's purpose. A fire blazing on the hearth, the rubbish cleared away, a blanket hung over the windows and doors, made our night quarters complete. Then gathering around the fire, each broiled his slip of bacon on the end of a stick, and enjoyed this rude repast far better than many a well appointed banquet in the North, for 'hunger was our sauce.' After supper we had, as it were, family prayers. The old dilapidated mansion, the costume, arms, and varied expressions of the soldiers as they lounged around listening to the Word of God, all brought into view by the flickering blaze that roared within the chimney, made a scene that any artist might wish to copy. "After marching all the next day we joined our wagon train at dusk, near Rappahannock Station, and found that we were just in time, for the whole army was on the move to Fredericksburg. Joining the train, I marched half the night with them in the darkness and rain. As there was no shelter near, the next day was spent in the rain under a tree; and an attack on the wagon train being expected on the following night, my slumbers were neither very sound nor long continued. But such is the wonderful vitality that life in the open air gives, that one soon recovers from loss of sleep and fatigue. Our regiment moved down to Brook's Station, where it remained doing picket duty till it joined the advance on Fredericksburg.