Both sides claimed a victory at Antietam, but Lee retreated and his garrison at Harper's Ferry abandoned that place. McClellan did not pursue, but he concentrated his whole army around Harper's Ferry, where he remained apparently inactive for nearly two months. The whole peninsula formed by the Potomac and the Shenandoah from Smallwood's Ridge to the junction of the rivers, as well as the surrounding heights, soon became dotted with tents, and at night the two villages and the neighboring hills were aglow with hundreds of watchfires. From Camp Hill the ridge that separates the towns of Harper's Ferry and Bolivar the spectacle was magnificent, especially at night, and a spectator was forcibly reminded of a fine description of a similar scene in the eighth book of the Iliad. A hum of voices like that of an immense city or the hoarse murmur of the great deep arose from the valleys on either side and filled the air with a confusion of sounds, while to a person of sensibility it was sad to contemplate how many of this mighty host may have been fated never to leave the soil of Virginia, but sleep their long, last sleep far from home and kindred and in a hostile land. The bands of the various regiments frequently discoursed their martial strains, and nothing that sight or sound could do to stir the imagination was wanted. Of course, innumerable instances occurred of drunken rioting among the soldiers and of outrage on the citizens. A list of these would fill many volumes each much larger than this little book, and imagination can picture but faintly the sufferings of a people exposed helpless to the mercy of an undisciplined armed rabble, for candor obliges us to thus designate both the armies engaged in this war. Officers and men on both sides were brave as soldiers can be, but, except the West Pointers and the graduates of a few military academies, they knew nothing about the science of war, and it was impossible for an officer to check the excesses of his command, when many of the privates under him were, perhaps, his superiors socially in the civil life they had all left so lately and where all were volunteers fighting for a principle and not for a soldier's pay. General McClellan proceeded south in November, leaving a strong garrison at Harper's Ferry, and that place was occupied by the federals without interruption until the second invasion of the north by General Lee in June, 1863. All this time, as all through the war, the roads leading to Leesburg, Winchester, Martinsburg and other places were infested by guerillas in the service of the confederates and sometimes by deserters from and camp followers of the federals, the latter frequently committing outrages that were charged to the southern men. The most noted of the guerillas was a youth named John Mobley. He was a son of a woman named Polly Mobley, who lived on the Loudoun side of the Shenandoah, near Harper's Ferry, and his reputed father was a man named Sam.