“There is where you are mistaken,” was the reply of a comrade. “You see the different corps and divisions have been marching on converging roads. Well, we are almost up with Rhodes, and our delay of a day was evidently occasioned by Ewell’s being ahead of time. Now mark me, we will make a forced march to-night and begin the attack at daybreak in the morning. General Lee can spare no more time, in my humble opinion. Already he has lost too much, and the next thing we know, Hooker will be at our heels, and between him and Crouch we will have a devil of a hot time of it.” Entertaining such opinions pretty generally, great was the surprise of all to observe the head of the column, upon reaching the turnpike, file abruptly to the left instead of the right, and we found ourselves retracing the steps of the day before. Disappointment and chagrin was depicted in every countenance as we silently wended our weary way. The boisterous, merry shout of the past few days was no longer to be heard; and the troops did not move with that elasticity of step in the retreat (as we termed it) which had characterized their advance, for officers and men had alike become impressed with the belief that some disaster had befallen us, and we were a second time to recross the Potomac. After a march of twelve miles the command went into _bivouac_ near the village of Springfield. The evening’s meal was moodily discussed, and all went sulkily to sleep. The reveille of the following morning was not as cheerfully responded to as before; and shortly after taking up our line of march the barefooted (and there were hundreds of them) who, with cracked and bleeding feet had borne the advance march so cheerfully, now began to murmur and complain. During the day’s march we met about two hundred paroled Federal soldiers who had been captured a day or two before by General J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry, and ordered to proceed to Carlisle. They were hundred days men, called out by the Governor of Pennsylvania, to repel the invaders of their sacred soil, and had been but a few days in the field. As they passed our bronzed and weather-beaten gray jackets the contrast was striking indeed. The one clothed in new and well-fitting uniforms, the other in rags, and shoeless. Many were the wistful glances directed at their well-cased feet by Steuart’s men, but they passed us without molestation. Not so, however, with the Stonewall Brigade, which was immediately in our wake. The temptation was too great for their commander, General Walker, to resist, and halting the young heroes of a single skirmish, he addressed them pretty much as follows: