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394 so I went up into the fort to seek for that officer. The place was entirely deserted, except by the Dutch Artillery company, whose Captain was the man I wanted, and I found him in his tent playing cards. He signed my pass, I left the fort by way of the old bank, and was never in it afterward. At the depot we were unable to find the box, and notwithstanding all my efforts Rolly insisted on telegraphing to Phoenixville that we would be there in a day or two. On our way back we stopped in a hardware store to be weighed, and he had come down to two hundred, having lost fifty pounds, while I stood at my old figure of one hundred and thirty. When we returned to camp we learned that mustering out had been stopped on account of a rumor that the rebels had again appeared in the State, and it was said we were to start down the valley again on the morrow. It would have been amusing to an uninterested party to have seen how crest fallen every one seemed, and what a number of solemn faces were to be met with. I must acknowledge that I felt very unpleasantly on the subject. While we were down below I could have remained there indefinitely, or gone further without any painful sensation in regard to home, but when we started on the leturn, my thoughts were engaged in forming anticipations of the pleasure of meeting, and wandered continually in that direction, so that the news we had received acted like a wet cloth. The Harrisburg paper of the next morning, however, said the report was a canard, and the business was resumed.

(Tuesday, July 28th.) Rennard came into camp early and was still troubled with a cough. Nyce and George Meigs were sent down to Dillsburg for some muskets which had been left there, and returned with two or three. In the afternoon we marched over to Camp Curtin and deposited our muskets in the same armory from which we