I am getting very tired roaming about - & of so many disappointments.  It is the understanding that we remain here until we are mustered out - which will be but a few days if there is an officer here to muster us, & I suppose of course there will be - I think we will be on the way for home in one week from today - O' it makes the blood leap in my veins to think of an event "so devoutly to be wished" & even that week seems as if it would be long.  But time is passing rapidly away & with it I trust a happy meeting for us my dear wife.  My heart swells with pride when I reflect with what fortitude you have borne the privations & duties necesisarily entailed by my absence.  You have bourne all with a heroism worthy of emulation, & O, how I long to clasp that warm heart to my own, God in His mercy grant that our brightest hopes for the future may be realized - There is only one thing now to trouble me.  My fears may be groundless, but I cannot but feel uneasy about Cyrus.  The last I have heard of him he was a prisiner of war, & what he may have suffered, if even living, who can tell.  I have a dread that he was on board the Sultana & perished with that mass of struggling victims in the Miss River. O, the thought overcomes me & I hope it may not be so
