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We saw them as we approached lying in all attitudes upon either side of the road, some few munching bread from the haversack, and some few drinking from their gourds. As we came up they were compelled to rise to salute another arm upon its passage, and their faces, all their double hedge of faces, were full of insolence and of merriment, for they had recently sung and eaten, and the march had done them good—they had covered about eighteen miles.

So we went by, and when we had left them some few hundred yards we again heard faintly behind us the beginning of a new song, the tune of which was known among us as “The Washerwoman.” It is a good marching song. But shortly after this we heard no more, for first the noise of the horse hoofs extinguished the singing, and later distance swallowed it up altogether.

We had come into quarters early in the afternoon, we had groomed our horses and fed them, and watered them at the chalkiest stream, we had brought them back to their stables, and the stable guard was set; those who were not on duty went off about the village, and several, of whom I was one, gathered in the house of a man whose relative in the regiment had led us thither.