Having passed this obstruction and replaced my shoe, etc., I went to a house not far off, where I inquired the way to Sharpsburg, and was directed to follow a country road that took its way over the hill; and did so. I reached Sharpsburg by one o’clock having walked a little more than twelve miles in five hours. There was an hotel there and having taken dinner, I started for Smoketown, three miles distant, where I had lain in the hospital. I visited the village—a village consisting of two dwelling-houses and a corn-crib—then returned to the battle-field and spent an hour or two traveling about in search of the spot on which I had received my wound. I failed to find the interesting place, although I had felt confident of being able to walk directly to it in a straight line. It is remarkable what a change takes place in a year or two in the appearance of the ground on which a battle has been fought. Thirty months had now elapsed since the battle of Antietam, and a casual observer would not have noticed any trace of the conflict. I saw a Mr. Miller plowing in a field opposite the little Tunker Church by the pike—a building that had been nearly knocked to pieces in the fight, but had since been repaired—and he showed me a full set of “bones” lying in a fence-corner, which he had just “plowed up.” He said they had been scarcely under the surface of the earth; but that he would bury them deeper. This was the famous cornfield in which the struggle between Hooker’s and Longstreet’s corps was so terrible, and where so many of the Pennsylvania Reserves were killed. I found in this field several bullets, a fragment of shell, and a few canteens, straps, etc., lying about. As evening approached and I had walked from eighteen to twenty miles since morning, I started for Keedysville, several miles distant, with the intention of staying there all night. After the amputation of my leg at Antietam, as mentioned in the first chapter, I had lain in a barn near the creek, a week or two; and this evening, after crossing the creek and walking a little way toward Keedysville, I recognized this same barn, although I had never known its precise location: and O, what recollections of misery it brought back to me! My sufferings in that barn were so terrible, so far exceeding any thing that might merely be termed pain, that, as I look back now, the time spent there seems more like a horrible dream than a reality! The sun was sinking as I stood in the road gazing thoughtfully at the barn; and I thought of the evenings I had lain within, almost dead, and seen the sun’s last red rays struggling into that somber apartment of misery, through the crevices. While I thus stood, a lady, who had come out of an adjacent house, approached me. Her footsteps as she drew near aroused me from my train of thought. “Good evening, ma’am,” said I. “How do you do? Will you walk into the house?” was the response.