I rose. "I must be going," said I, and walked off down the street. The act, under the circumstances, did not seem to me entirely natural, but it was the best I could do; these men, I hoped, would merely think me an oddity. In the next street I stopped at the brightest fire that I saw. "This is not the Seventh, is it?" I asked. "No," said one; "the Seventh is over there," pointing. "What regiment is this?" "Our'n," said he. "Oh, don't be giving me any of your tomfoolery," said I. "This is the Thirty-third," said another. I went back toward the Seventh, passed beyond it, and approached another group. A man of this group rose and sauntered away toward the left. I followed him. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, "Hello, Jim! where are you going?" He turned and said, "Hello yourself, if you want anybody to hello; but my name's not Jim." "I beg your pardon," said I; "afraid I'm in the wrong pew; what regiment is this?" "The Twenty-eighth," said he, and went on without another word. The nature of the replies given me by my friends of the Thirty-third and Twenty-eighth made me feel nearly certain that all of Branch's regiments were from one State. I was supposed to belong to the brigade; it was needless to tell me the name of the State from which my regiment--from which all the regiments--came. Had the brigade been a mixed one, the men would have said, "Thirty-third North Carolina;" "Twenty-eighth North Carolina"; that they did not trouble themselves with giving the name of their State was strong reason for believing that all the regiments, as I knew the Seventh to be, were from North Carolina. I continued my walk, picking up as I went several envelopes, which I thrust into my pocket. It must now have been about ten o'clock. The men had become silent; but few were sitting at the fires. I believed I had sufficient information as to the composition of the brigade, but I had learned little as to its strength. I knew that there were five streets in the encampment, and therefore five regiments in the brigade. But how many men were in the brigade? Behind the rear regiment was a small cluster of wall-tents, which I took for brigade headquarters. At the head of every street was a wall-tent, which I supposed was the colonel's. At the left of the encampment of tents, and separated from the encampment by a space of a hundred yards, perhaps, was a line of brighter fires than now showed in the streets. The dying out of the fires in the streets was what called my attention, by contrast, to these brighter fires. I walked toward the bright fires; to my surprise I found troops in bivouac. I went boldly up to the nearest fire, and found two men cooking. I asked for a drink of water. "Sorry, neighbour, but we hain't got nary nother drop," said one. "An' we don't see no chance to git any," said the other. "Don't you know where the spring is?" I asked. "No; do you?"