l up and away, riding over the hills and across the
dips toward the main sweep of the famous valley which played such a great
part in the tactics and fighting of the Civil War. It had already been
ravaged much by march and battle and siege, but its heavier fate was yet
to come.

But Dick did not think much of what might happen as he rode with his
comrades across the broken country and saw, rising before them, the dim
blue line of the mountains that walled in the eastern side of the valley.
The day was not so warm as usual, and among the higher hills a breeze was
blowing, bringing currents of fresh, cool air that made the lungs expand
and the pulses leap. The three youths felt almost as if they had been
re-created, and Pennington became vocal.

"Woe is the day!" he said. "I lament what I have lost!"

"If what you have lost was worth keeping I lament with you," said Dick.
"O, woe is the day!"

"O, woe is the day for me, too!" said Warner, "but why do we utter cries
of woe, Frank?"

"Because of the narrow, little, muddy little, ugly little, mean little
trench we've left behind us! O, woe is me that I've left such a trench,
where one could sit in mud to the knees and touch the mud wall on either
side of him, for this open, insecure world, where there is nothing but
fresh air to breathe, nothing but water to drink, nothing but food to eat,
and no world but blue skies, hills, valleys, forests, fields, rivers,
creeks and brooks!"

"O, woe is me!" the three chanted together. "We sigh for our narrow
trench, and its muddy bottom and muddy sides and foul air and lack of
space, and for the shells bursting over our heads, and for the hostile
riflemen ready to put a bullet through us at the first peep! Now,
do we sigh for all those blessings we've left behind us?"

"Never a sigh!" said Dick.

"Not a tear from me," said Pennington.

"The top of the earth for me," said Warner.

Their high spirits spread to the whole column. So thoroughly inured were
they to war that their losses of the night before were forgotten, and
they lifted up their voices and sang. Youth and the open air would have
their way and the three colonels did not object. They preferred men who
sang to men who groaned.

"Do you know just where we're going, and where we expect to find this
Little Phil of yours?" asked Warner.

"I've heard that we're to report to him at Halltown, a place south of the
Potomac, and about four miles from Harper's Ferry