It was one of these parties of horse I had encountered. The officer sent me on with a guard, and thus, in the company of two troopers, I rode through a fairly wooded country to the much-worn road leading down to the river. Here my guards left me with the picket at the bridge. It was a half-hour before the officer here stationed was satisfied, and meanwhile I stared across the Schuylkill at the precipitous bluffs, and wondered where lay the army which had passed the winter back of them. A few men along the far shore, and on the hill beyond a little redoubt, were all the signs of life or of war and its precautions. The bridge, over which presently I rode, was of army waggons weighted with stone, and on top rails with rude scantling. On the high posts driven into the river-bed for stay of the bridge were burned the names of the favourite generals. Once over, I walked Lucy up a cleft in the shore cliff, and came out on the huts of General Varnum’s brigade. The little world of an army came in view. I was on the first rise from the stream, a mile and a half to the south of the Valley Creek. To westward the land fell a little, and then rose to the higher slope of Mount Joy. To north the land again dropped, and rose beyond to the deep gulch of the Valley Creek. On its farther side the fires of a picket on Mount Misery were seen. Everywhere were regular rows of log huts, and on the first decline of every hill slope intrenchments, ditches, redoubts, and artillery. Far beyond, this group of hills fell gradually to the rolling plain. A mile away were the long outlying lines of Wayne, and the good fellows with whom I had charged at Germantown. Everywhere the forests were gone. Innumerable camp-fires and a city of log huts told for what uses they had fallen. On the uplands about me ragged men were drilling; far away I heard the cavalry bugles. A certain sense of elation and gaiety came over me. It lasted no long time, as I rode Lucy over the limestone hillocks and down to the lesser valley, which far away fell into the greater vale of Chester. The worst of the winter’s trials were over, and yet I was horror-struck at the misery and rags of these poor fellows. No wonder men deserted, and officers were resigning in scores, desperate under the appeals of helpless wife and family in far-away homes. It was no better on the upland beyond. Everywhere were rude huts in rows, woeful-looking men at drill, dejected sentries, gaunt, hungry, ill clothed, with here and there a better-dressed officer to make the rest look all the worse. I thought of the grenadier British troops, fat and strong, in the city I had fled from, and marvelled to think of what kept them from sweeping this squalid mob away, as a housewife switches out the summer flies. Full of thought, I rode a mile through the melting drifts of snow, and came on Wayne’s brigade, which held the lines looking in this direction.