when we had any, or burnt-bread for coffee when the real stuff was lacking.  Flour and bacon were issued to the men.  We kneaded dough on an oilcloth, or gum-blanket as the Yankee prisoners called it, and baked the dough by spreading it on barrel-heads and propping them before the fire.  When these boards were not to be had, we made the dough into long slender rolls, which, we twined about an iron ramrod and put before the fire on wooden forks stuck in the ground.  My haversack of food brought from Richmond was exhausted; this night but one day’s ration was issued.

* * * * *

On the next morning Jackson began his movement around Pope’s right.  I had no rifle, or cartridge-box, or knapsack, and managed so as to keep up.  Being unarmed, I was allowed to march at will—­in the ranks or not, as I chose.  The company numbered thirty-one men.  The day’s march was something terrible.  We went west, and northwest, and north, fording streams, taking short cuts across fields, hurrying on and on.  No train of wagons delayed our march; our next rations must be won from the enemy.  Jackson’s rule in marching was two miles in fifty minutes, then ten minutes rest,—­but this day there was no rule; we simply marched, and rested only when obstacles compelled a halt,—­which loss must at once be made up by extra exertion.  At night we went into bivouac near a village called Salem.  We were now some ten or fifteen miles to the west of Pope’s right flank.

There were no rations, and the men were broken and hungry.  A detail from each company was ordered to gather the green ears from some fields of corn purchased for the use of the government.  That night I committed the crime of eating eighteen of the ears half roasted.

At daylight on the 26th we again took up the march.  I soon straggled.  I was deathly sick.  Captain Haskell tried to find a place for me in some ambulance, but failed.  I went aside into thick woods and lay down; I slept, and when I awoke the sun was in mid-heaven, and Jackson’s corps was ten miles ahead, but I was no longer ill.  The troops had all passed me; there were no men on the road except a few stragglers like myself.  I hurried forward through White Plains—­then along a railroad through a gap in some mountains—­then through Gainesville at dark—­and at last, about ten o’clock at night, after questioning until I was almost in despair, I found Company H asleep in a clover field.  Still no rations.

Before dawn of the 27th we were waked by the sound of musketry toward the east—­seemingly more than two miles away.  We moved at sunrise, and soon reached Manassas Junction, already held by our troops.  Up to this time I had been unarmed, and all the men destitute of food; here now was an embarrassment of riches.  I got a short Enfield rifle, marked for eleven hundred yards.  Everything was in abundance except good water.  The troops of Jackson and Ewell and Hill crammed their haversacks, and loaded