At Bull's Gap I found the corps headquarters in a shingle-palace which had been built for a hotel at the railway station, and which was now the only house there. It was empty as a barn and fast going to ruin, but it gave shelter for our office work. Wood's division of the Fourth Corps was put in march to join the Army of the Cumberland, and we were left to watch the enemy and await the moment when the destruction of the railway and our own march southward should begin. We soon had a curious bit of evidence that Longstreet had finally abandoned the expectation of re-occupying East Tennessee. It was found in the applications made by women to join their husbands who were in the Confederate service. The "grapevine telegraph" was an "institution" during the whole war. News which was either interesting or important was passed on through the lines, and it was impossible to be so rigid in precautions as greatly to delay it. To stop it was utterly futile. Longstreet had hardly received the orders from his government to prepare to rejoin Lee's army in Virginia, when the headquarters of our army at Knoxville felt the pressure of applications for leave to pass the lines. On the 6th of April a party of forty women and children came up by railway, to be sent through the lines under a flag. They were of course without tents or any means of camping out, and the crazy building in which I had my quarters was that night as crowded and as picturesque as an Asiatic caravanserai. The rain and the almost impassable roads made their journey anything but one of pleasure, but by the aid of the few wagons at the post they went forward in a day or two. A second party, about as large, followed in the course of a week, and had even a rougher time than the first. There were delays on the part of their friends, in sending trains and escort to meet them at the break in the railway, but the hope of rejoining loved ones gave them courage, and they bore cheerfully their sufferings and privations.