To leave their canned fruits, and milk, and fresh eggs, and board floors, and a stroll on the avenue in the afternoon, and go where glory waited for them! Happy, happy gray-breasts! We wandered enviously round the excited camp, and talked with our friends. Many were the rumors, appalling to us in those days, when we were yet unused to camp 'chin.' The regiment was to go to Harper's Ferry. Johnston was there. They would hang him if they took him. They were to march straight to Richmond, One man of the 'Engineer Company' was going to resign, he said, because his company had to remain to guard the camp. They were to take two days' rations and forty rounds of cartridges per man--_ball_ cartridges. Forty rounds of ball cartridges and two days' work! Surely, we thought, the days of the rebellion are numbered. And then, chewing the bitter cud of the reflection that the war would almost certainly be ended before we got a chance at the enemy, we wandered sadly back to our quarters, Smallweed growling horribly all the way. Our 'headquarters' we find in a great state of excitement. We find the orderly and Major Heavysterne discussing the prospects of the rebels being able to hold out a month, and Color-Sergeant Hepp and the adjutant both trying to decide the dispute. Hepp thinks they can't do without leather, and the adjutant thinks the want of salt must fetch them in a few weeks. Thinks? Decides! Whatever may be doubtful, this is certain. Everybody seems strangely excited. We tell them our news. 'Tell us some'n do'n know!' rasps Lieutenant Harch; 'our b'ttalion's goin', too; get ready, both of, quick! Smallweed, where in the h-- have you been? I've had to do all your work.' We were to go at nine o'clock at night. It was then eight. Whither? No one knew. The chaplain comes in, with symptoms of erysipelas in his nose, and a villanous breath, to tell us, while we--the quartermaster-sergeant and I--are packing our knapsacks and leaving lines of farewell for those at home and at other people's homes, that the major has imparted to him in confidence the awful secret that we are bound for Mount Vernon, to remove the bones of Washington. This gives us something terrible to think of as we march down, in quick time (a suggestion of that adjutant, I know), to the Long Bridge, and during the long delay there, spent by commanding officers in pottering about and gesticulating. By commanding officers? There is one there who does not potter, standing erect--that one with the little point of fire between his fingers that marks the never-quenched cigarette--talking to Major Heavysterne in low and earnest tones, but perfectly cool and clear the while. That is our splendid Colonel Diamond, as brave and good a soldier as ever drew sword, as noble and true a Christian as ever endured persecution and showed patience. They are discussing a plan for crossing the river in boats, landing at a causeway where the Alexandria road