o speak to Sheridan about it. This is no way to
starve the Johnnies to death. Seest aught more, Brother Richard?"

"I do! I do! Jump up, boys, and use your own glasses! I behold a large
man on a gray horse, riding slowly along, as if he were inspecting troops
away behind the trenches. Wherever he passes the soldiers snatch off
their caps and, although I can't hear 'em, I know they're cheering.
It's Lee himself!"

Both Warner and Pennington swung themselves upon the lower boughs of the
tree and put their glasses to their eyes.

"It's surely Lee," said Warner. "I'm glad to get a look at him. He's
been giving us a lot of trouble for more than three years now, but I
think General Grant is going to take his measure."

"They're terribly reduced," said Pennington, "and if we stick to it we're
bound to win. Still, you boys will recall for some time that we've had a
war. What else do you see from the heights of the apple tree, Dick?"

"Distant dust behind our own lines, and figures moving in it dimly.
Cavalry practicing, I should say. Have you fellows fruit enough?"

"Plenty. You can climb down and if the farmer hurries here with his dog
to catch you we'll protect you."

"This is a fine apple tree," said Dick, as he descended slowly. "Apple
trees are objects of beauty. They look so well in the spring all in
white bloom, and then they look just as well in the fall, when the red or
yellow apples hang among the leaves. And this is one of the finest I've
ever seen."

He did not dream then that he should remember an apple tree his whole
life, that an apple tree, and one apple tree in particular, should always
call to his mind a tremendous event, losing nothing of its intensity
and vividness with the passing years. But all that was in the future,
and when he joined his comrades on the ground he made good work with the
biggest and finest apple he could find.

"Early apples," he said, looking up at the tree. "It's not the end of
July yet."

"But good apples, glorious apples, anyhow," said Pennington, taking
another. "Besides, it's fine and cool like autumn."

"It won't stay," said Dick. "We've got the whole of August coming.
Virginia is like Kentucky. Always lots of hot weather in August.
Glad there's no big fighting to be done just now. But it's a pity,
isn't it, to tear up a fine farming country like this. Around here is
where the United States started. John Smith and Rolfe and Pocahontas and
the re