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on the outskirts of the town and ate breakfast, for which we paid twenty-five cents each. It was the first time we had eaten from a table since leaving home, and I never enjoyed a meal more. It seemed to me I could not get enough of those short-cakes to satisfy myself, and they disappeared in a most miraculous manner. On returning to the muskets, I sat down upon a large stone in the centre of the field and wrote a letter to mother, which a boy promised to put in the Post Office for me. It soon after commenced raining very hard and we took shelter under a sort of archway which crossed the pike at the toll gate. Becoming tired of waiting there, I proposed to Nyce to go in and have a look at the town. There was a certainty of our getting wet; a probability of being arrested by the provost and sent to the guard-house; a possibility of the regiment moving off during our absence and leaving us in the lurch; but knowing that if we did not risk something we could see but little, in we started. Following the pike for some distance we turned to the left, crossed the Conecocheague, a rapid stream which runs directly through the centre of the town, and went to the hospital, where we saw a number of greyback prisoners who were confined there. We endeavored to find some cakes in the stores, but there was not anything of the kind in the place; all having been consumed and the bakeries stopped. We then concluded to go to the depot and take a view of the depredations which the rebels had committed there. All of the buildings belonging to the railroad company were in ruins. The plan adopted for their destruction was to batter in the walls with heavy bars until the structure fell. I was at a loss to understand why they had not applied fire and thus saved themselves from what must have required a great deal of labor. All the machinery which could be injured had been rendered