Some three miles beyond Hunter's Run we passed a poor cabin--the first human tenement we had seen since leaving the Mount Holley paper mill. Pitch darkness was now fallen upon us. Here were gathered a motley crowd of stragglers--thirty or forty in number--from regiments in advance of us. They had built fires in different parts of the premises, and looked, as they sat and stood huddled around them, like gipsies--their faces red in the ghastly fire-light. Some were moving about under the trees of the door-yard, like phantoms. At a short distance in rear of the cabin thin parallel streaks of light were visible, as if shining through the chinks of a barn. Here, it was evident, another squad was quartered. As we passed this group of shadows, and plunged again into the gloomy darkness, the spectral sight, as we looked back, seemed like a phantasmagoria of Hades. A mile further and we halted--a thicket along the road-side offering a retreat only less forlorn than the miry road. Rubber cloths were spread and we lay down for a little sleep. But the work of the day was not yet ended. About midnight we were roused again by the order "Forward column!"--a forced march indeed! The exigency, it was evident, must be great! On, on, through rain and mire, one mile, two miles, three miles to the hamlet of Laurel Forge, indistinguishable in the darkness, which gave refuge to all that remained of what was twelve hours before a proud regiment, filling the mountains with the echoes of its fervid patriotic song, now a forlorn, exhausted handful of men clutching greedily the shelter and the hope of rest which the grimy forge offered. From this category must be excepted one company which, occupying the right of the column, had forced the passage of the flood at Hunter's Run when we first reached it on our march, the imminent peril attending which had caused the order of countermarch to be given to the rest of the regiment. They reached the dusky hamlet before dark and passed the night in comparative comfort. Thus closed at Laurel Forge--now forever associated in our memories with the Valley Forge of the Fathers by reason of a common suffering--our Fourth of July in the wilderness. If those immortal patriots who gave us the day fared worse for our sakes, we who kept the day are content to know that we fared about as badly as was in our power for the sake of those who are to follow us. To think of friends at home setting off rockets and the like in honor of the day, and very likely in our honor too, seemed so ridiculous in connection with our sorry plight as to provoke laughter irresistibly. It was like trying to cheer a mourning friend at a funeral by telling him stories.