IN THE RANKS TO THE ANTIETAM.

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“ran the guard”—an easy thing to do in thedarkness and hubbub—and returned shortly after,struggling with a weight of miscellaneous plunder ;a crock of butter, a quantity of apple-butter,some lard, a three-legged skillet weighing severalpounds, and a live hen. It was a marvel how hemanaged to carry so much; but he was a raregleaner always, with a comprehensive method thatcovered the ground. That night we had severalimmense flapjacks, the whole size of the pan;then, tethering the hen to one of the tent pegs,we went to sleep, to be roused an hour or so laterby hearing our two-legged prize cackling and flut-tering off in the darkness.

Up to the 10th the army had not marched somuch as it had drifted, but from this point on ourpurpose seemed to grow more definite and theinterest deepened steadily. There had been spo-radic fighting through the day (the 13th), butit was over the hills to the west, and we heardnothing of it beyond those airy echoes that takethe shape of rumor. Now, however, the fermentat the front, borne back by galloping orderlies,was swiftly leavening the mass. Occasionally, onour march we would pass a broken gun wheel orthe bloated body of a slaughtered horse, and invarious ways we knew that we were close uponthe enemy, and that we could not now be longdelayed. This would have been told us by theburden of our daily orders, always the same, tohold ourselves “in readiness to march at a mo-ment’s notice,” with the stereotyped addendum,“three days’ cooked rations and forty rounds.”Every one lay down to sleep that night with afeeling of impending battle.

By daylight next morning we were in motionagain — the whole army. The gathering of such amultitude is a swarm, its march a vast migration.It fills up every road leading in the same directionover a breadth of many miles, with long ammu-nition and supply trains disposed for safety alongthe inner roads, infantry and artillery next in orderoutwardly, feelers of cavalry all along its frontand far out on its flanks; while behind, trailingalong every road for miles (ravelings from thegreat square blanket which the enemy’s cavalry,if active, snip off with ease), are the rabble of strag-glers—laggards through sickness or exhaustion,squads of recruits, convalescents from the hospital,special duty men going up to rejoin their regiments.Each body has its route laid down for it each day,its time of starting set by watch, its place ofbivouac or camp appointed, together with thehour of reaching it. If two roads come together,the corps that reaches the junction first moves on,while the other files out into the fields, stacks arms,builds fires, and boils its coffee. Stand, now, bythe roadside while a corps is filing past. Theymarch “route step,” as it is called,— that is, notkeeping time,—and four abreast, as a country roadseldom permits a greater breadth, allowing for theaides and orderlies that gallop in either directioncontinually along the column. If the march hasjust begun, you hear the sound of voices every-where, with roars of laughter in spots, markingthe place of the company wag—generally some

Irishman, the action of whose tongue bears out hiscalling. Later on, when the weight of knapsackand musket begins to tell, these sounds die out; asense of weariness and labor rises from the toilingmasses streaming by, voiced only by the shuffle ofa multitude of feet, the rubbing and straining ofinnumerable straps, and the flop of full canteens.So uniformly does the mass move on that it sug-gests a great machine, requiring only its directingmind. Yet such a mass, without experience inbattle,would go to pieces before a moderately effective fire.Catch up a handful of snow and throw it, it fliesto fluff; pack it, it strikes like stone. Here isthe secret of organization — the aim and crown ofdrill, to make the units one, that when the crisiscomes, the missile may be thoroughly compacted.Too much, however, has been claimed for theoreticdiscipline — not enough for intelligent individualaction. No remark was oftener on the lips ofofficers during the war than this : ‘ ‘ Obey orders! Ido your thinking for you.” But that soldier isthe best whose good sense tells him when to bemerely a part of a machine and when not.

The premonitions of the night were not fulfillednext day. That day — the 14th of September—we crossed the Catoctin range of mountains, reach-ing the summit about noon, and descended itswestern slope into the beautiful valley of Middle-town. Half-way up the valley’s western side wehalted for a rest, and turned to look back on themoving host. It was a scene to linger in the mem-ory. The valley in which Middletown lies is fouror five miles wide, as I remember it, and runsalmost due north and south between the parallelranges of Catoctin and South Mountains. Fromwhere we stood the landscape lay below us, theeye commanding the opposite slope of the valleyalmost at point-blank. An hour before, from thesame spot, it had been merely a scene of quietpastoral beauty. All at once, along its easternedge the heads of the columns began to appear,and grew and grew, pouring over the ridge anddescending by every road, filling them completelyand scarring the surface of the gentle landscapewith the angry welts of war. By the farthestnorthern road—the farthest we could see — movedthe baggage wagons, the line stretching from thebottom of the valley back to the top of the ridge,and beyond, only the canvas covers of the wagonsrevealing their character. We knew that eachdot was a heavily loaded army wagon, drawn bysix mules and occupying forty feet of road atleast. Now they looked like white beads on astring. So far away were they that no motionwas perceptible. The constant swelling of the endof the line down in the valley, where the teamsturned into the fields to park, gave evidence that,in this way, it was being slowly reeled along theway. The troops were marching by two roadsfarther south. The Confederates fighting on thewestern summit must have seen them iflainly.Half a mile beyond us the column broke abruptly,filing off into line of battle, right and left, acrossthe fields. From that point backward and down-ward, across the valley and up the farther slope, itstretched with scarcely a gap, every curve and