The Bull-Run Rout

take a few days. Up to that time it seemed to be victory for us; and I didn't believe it could possibly be otherwise. So I went back to Centreville. I was very hungry as well as tired. It was now past four o'clock in the afternoon.

I soon found a group of sick officers who were about to dine off of boiled beef close by the army wagon in which I had come from Washington. They asked me to join them. I had just got fairly seated when the astounding news came that our army was defeated and was retreating. I didn't believe it; but I rushed to the hilltop to see for myself. Down there on the plain, where I had been in the morning, there was certainly much dust and confusion. Just then fresh troops, the reserves, started to go down, but even to my inexperienced eye it was plain that they went in bad order and went too late. It was there that I saw the general who wore two hats--one crushed over the other--and who was reported in newspaper accounts of the scene as being very drunk that day. He certainly appear