“I want to go home to my mammy!” screamed a voice at the next fire.

Nobody gave this yell the least notice.  I supposed it a common saying with homesick soldiers.

I wondered what Doc and the other men were thinking of me.  Perhaps I was thought a friend of one of the men who had brought the water; perhaps nobody thought anything, or cared anything, about me.  Although I felt helpless, I would remain.

A torn envelope was lying on the ground, within a few inches of my hand.  The addressed side was next the ground.  My fears fled; accident had helped me—­had given me a plan.

I turned the letter over.  The address was:—­

PRIVATE D.W.  ROBERTS,
Co.  G, 7th N.C.  Reg’t,
Branch’s Brigade,
Gordonsville, Va.

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?