animosity, and we're quite sure that you bear us none."

He extended his hand and Dick's met it in a warm grasp. Langdon also
shook hands with him, and as his eyes twinkled he said:

"Don't fail to notice my haughty bearing when I march at the head of a
triumphal troop down Broadway!"

"I promise," said Dick. Then he and Harry gave each other the final
clasp. But with the pride of the young they strove not to show emotion.

"Take care of yourself, Dick, old man!" said Harry. "Don't get in the
way of bullets and shell. Remember they're harder than you are."

"The same to you, Harry. It's not worth while to take any more risks
than necessary."

Then, obeying the call of the trumpets, they mounted and rode to their
own commands. There was something strange in this brief half hour of
friendship, when they buried the dead together. Blue and gray formed
again in long lines facing one another, but midway between was another
long line of fresh earth, and it rose up suddenly, an impassable barrier
to a charge by either force.

"We can't beat them and they can't beat us. That's been proved," said
Colonel Hertford to Colonel Winchester and Colonel Bedford.

"So it has," said Colonel Winchester, "and I'd like to march from here.
I don't care for any more fighting on this spot."

"Nor I. Hark, they've decided it for us!"

The Southern trumpet sounded another call, and the line of men in gray,
turning away, began to march into the southwest. Colonel Hertford
promptly gave an order, the Union trumpet sounded also, and the men in
blue, curving also, rode toward the northwest.

Dick and his comrades were silent a long time. Their feelings were
perhaps the same. To youth a year is a long time, and two years are
almost a life time. Three years and more of it had made war to them a
normal state. They had not thought much before of an end to the great
struggle between North and South, and of what was to come after. Now
they realized that peace, not war, was normal, and that it must return.

The moonlight faded and then the stars were dimmed, as the darkness that
precedes the dawn came. The silvery veil that had been thrown over
them vanished and the column became a ghostly train riding in the dusk.
But the road into which Shepard guided them led over a pleasant land
of hills and clear streams. Although the scouts on their flanks kept
vigilant watch, many of the men slept soundly in their saddles. Dick
himsel