This conversation took place at an early hour of the morning. Two hours afterward, I was in the saddle and riding toward Chancellorsville, with the double object of inspecting the pickets and taking Mohun his commission. I have described in my former _Memoirs_ that melancholy country of the Wilderness; its unending thickets; its roads, narrow and deserted, which seem to wind on forever; the desolate fields, here and there covered with stunted bushes; the owls flapping their dusky wings; the whip-poor-will, crying in the jungle; and the moccasin gliding stealthily amid the ooze, covered with its green scum. Strange and sombre country! lugubrious shades where death lurked! Already two great armies had clutched there in May, 1863. Now, in May, ‘64, the tangled thicket was again to thunder; men were going to grapple here in a mad wrestle even more desperate than the former! Two roads stretch from Orange Court-House to Chancellorsville--the old turnpike, and the plank road--running through Verdiersville. I took the latter, followed the interminable wooden pathway through the thicket, and toward evening came to the point where the Ely’s Ford road comes in near Chancellorsville. Here, surrounded by the rotting weapons, bones and skulls of the great battle already fought, I found Mohun ready for the battle that was coming. He commanded the regiment on picket opposite Ely’s Ford; and was pointed out to me at three hundred yards from an old torn down house which still remains there, I fancy. Mohun had dismounted, and, leaning against the trunk of a tree, was smoking a cigar. He was much thinner and paler than when I had last seen him; but his eye was brilliant and piercing, his carriage erect and proud. In his fine new uniform, replacing that left at Fort Delaware, and his brown hat, decorated with a black feather, he was the model of a cavalier, ready at a moment’s warning to meet the enemy. We exchanged a close grasp of the hand. Something in this man had attracted me, and from acquaintances we had become friends, though Mohun had never given me his confidence. I informed him of Nighthawk’s visit and narrative, congratulated him on his escape, and then presented him with his appointment to the grade of brigadier-general. “Hurrah for Stuart! He is a man to count on!” exclaimed Mohun, “and here inclosed is the order for me to take command of four regiments!” “I congratulate you, Mohun.” “I hope to do good work with them, my dear Surry--and I think they are just in time.” With which words Mohun put the paper in his pocket. “You know the latest intelligence?” he said. “Yes; but do not let us talk of it. Tell me something about yourself--but first listen to a little narrative from me.” And I described the visit which I had made with Tom Herbert to the house near Buckland; the scene between Darke and his companion; and, to keep back nothing, repeated the substance of their conversation. Mohun knit his brows; then burst into a laugh.