A psychological history of the uneven progress of that billowy retreat would be as far beyond my reach as of the ten minutes of outset trial. I thought only vaguely of my home, of my regiment, of my moments of danger in past life. I listened during that night till my sense of hearing changed from a passive to an active sense. I got my neck sadly cramped in lifting my head from the ground every time my body rolled face upward to gain some knowledge of the enemy. My imagination started up all sorts of shapes about me. The damp, heavy atmosphere sent a chill through my veins. I apprehended rain. I soon, also, began to think of daylight, (before which I had many hours,) and to wonder how I should secrete myself after sunrise. I did not feel hungry; but I had not gone far before I felt the faint longings of thirst. The ground, too, over which I travelled, was not all meadow land, and had worse features than grass-swords and gravel bullets. I did not find many fences, but I crossed innumerable small streams and one heavy hedge. I noticed that by degrees, judging from the sound, the Rebel troops were getting by, only dropping along finally in dish-water driblets,--and that, at last, but scattering bodies of infantry, and at intervals some wagons, occupied the road, moving like dark lobsters in the midnight mists. I could not take to it myself, because of them; and I knew too well how full it would be of stragglers, those worthless gleanings of an army, even after the rear-guard had swept onwards. But I did not hesitate to erect my body from its voluntary abasement and to make walking a branch of my exercise, when convinced that only vagrants could chance to see me. They never capture prisoners on either side. Thus was I enabled for two hours before sunrise to accomplish more than twice as much as my five hours' rolling labors had attained.