dream.  I thought of little else.  Food was repugnant.  I had fever, and was full of fancies.  I was surprised by the thought that I had twice already been ill in the army.  Once was at the time of the battle of Fredericksburg; but when and where was the other?  I did not know, yet I was sure that I had been sick in the army before I joined Captain Haskell’s company, and before I ever saw Dr. Frost.

Long did I wonder over this, and not entirely without result.  Suddenly I connected the face of my dream with my forgotten illness.  But that was all.  My old tutor was a doctor and had attended me.  I felt sure of so much.

Then I wondered if I could by any means find the Doctor’s name.  Some name must be connected with the title.  That he was Dr. Some-one I had no doubt.  I tried to make Dr. Frost’s face fit the face of my dream, but it would not fit.  Besides, I knew that Dr. Frost had never been my teacher.

We had gone into bivouac about one o’clock, some two miles north of Madison Court-House.  This advance was over ground that was not unfamiliar to me.  The mountains in the distance and the hills near by, the rivers and the roads, the villages and the general aspect of this farming country, had been impressed upon my mind first when alone I hurried forward to join Jackson’s command on its famous march around Pope; and, later, when we had returned from the Shenandoah Valley after Sharpsburg, and more recently still, on our retreat from Pennsylvania.

What General Lee’s purposes were now, caused much speculation in the camp.  It was evident that, if the bulk of the army had not as yet uncovered Richmond, our part of it was very far to the left.  We might be advancing to the Valley, or we might be trying to get to Meade’s rear, just as Jackson had moved around Pope in sixty-two; another day might show.  The most of the men believed that we were on a flank march similar to Jackson’s, and some of them went so far as to say that both Ewell’s and Hills corps were now near Madison Court-House.

I felt but little interest in the talk of the men.  My mind was upon myself.  I gave my comrades no encouragement to speak with me, but lay apart, moody and feverish.  Occasionally my thought, it is true, reverted to the situation of the army, but only for a moment.  Something was about to be done; but if I could have controlled events, I would not have known what to choose.  One thing, however, began to loom clear through the dim future:  if we were working to get to Meade’s rear, that general was in far greater danger than he had been at Gettysburg.  With Lee at Manassas Junction, between Meade and Washington, the Army of the Potomac would yield from starvation, or fight at utter disadvantage; and there was no army to help near by, as McClellan’s at Alexandria in sixty-two.

The night brought no movement.

XXXVI

THE ALPHABET