The sun has gone down, and the moon has risen, and we are on the main road from Fort Donelson, and will reach our camp soon, and have a good supper, and rest sweetly in our tents after our day's ride. We think over what we will have for supper, and debate whether the pigs, or chickens, or corn-meal can be added to the rations we shall find in camp. We are reckoning like inexperienced soldiers. The uncertainty of legal, is nothing to the uncertainty of military life. In the law you can at least calculate on your breakfast, and a part of your bed; but in camp you can calculate on nothing. We approach Fort Henry, and plunge into the mud that environs our camp. We struggle through till we come to the trees where the horses should be tied, and to the little knoll where the tents should be pitched. We look around in vague astonishment--horses, and men, and tents have vanished; all is darkness and silence; our camp has gone. To come home and find your home absconded, to leave your house in the morning and find it has walked away at the evening, is something new. Searching in the darkness for the new camp is folly; there is nothing to be done but wait till to-morrow. It is very easy to say _wait_, but how are we to _wait_? If we had some beds to _wait_ in, and some supper to _wait_ for, it would be tolerable; but we were _only_ going for a little while, so we left our blankets, and it was such a fine day that we did not take our overcoats. Who would have dreamt of the colonel playing us such a trick? At Fort Donelson I learned the first lesson--"do not trust to your trunk;" now I have to learn the second--"do not trust to your camp." Hereafter I will not leave for half an hour without having my blanket rolled behind, and my overcoat strapped before. If I only had them now! But lamenting will do no good; something must be done. "Who has got any matches?" "Smith and Jones." "Then Smith and Jones light a fire." The fire soon blazes up and discloses a small pile, which the wagons have overlooked. There are a few blankets and overcoats, three plates, a couple of mess-pans, and one camp-kettle. A new discovery is made--some coffee and a sack of meat. "What kind?" "Pork." "Hurrah! we're all right now." "No, salt beef." "Pshaw! What do they send salt beef to the army for? If it had only been pork, we could have toasted it on sticks, and fried it on plates, and broiled it on the coals, and have greased the pans with it; but this beef, we can do nothing with." But' we have the bushel of meal I fortunately bought, and the chickens. Pick the chickens, and cut them up; mix some meal and water, and make _corn dodgers_, as the Tennessians do. There are the plates to bake it on, and we can try baking it in the ashes. But the coffee--everybody looks forward to it--no matter if it _is_ poor and weak. Without milk, without sugar, and full of grounds, it is always the tired soldier's great restorative, his particular comfort. Our camp-kettle is set apart for it.