u didn't find your cousin among the
prisoners?"

"No, nor was he among their fallen whom we buried. Nor any of his
friends either. I'm quite sure that he escaped. My intuition tells me
so."

"It's not your intuition at all," said Warner reprovingly. "It's a
reasonable opinion, formed in your mind by antecedent conditions.
You call it intuition, because you don't take the trouble to discover the
circumstances that led to its production. It's only lazy minds that fall
back upon second sight, mind-reading and such things."

"Isn't he the big-word man?" said Pennington admiringly. "I tell you
what, George, General Early is still alive somewhere, and we're going to
send you to talk him to death. They say he's a splendid swearer, one of
the greatest that ever lived, but he won't be able to get out a single
cuss, with you standing before him, and spouting the whole unabridged
dictionary to him."

"At least when I talk I say something," replied Warner sternly. "It
seems strange to me, Frank Pennington, that your life on the plains,
where conditions, for the present at least, are hard, has permitted you
to have so much frivolity in your nature."

"It's not frivolity, George. It's a gay and bright spirit, in the rays
of which you may bask without price. It will do you good."

"Do you know what's to be our next duty?"

"No, I don't, and I'm not going to bother about it. I'll leave that
directly to Colonel Winchester, and indirectly to General Sheridan.
When you rest, put your mind at rest. Concentration on whatever you are
doing is the secret of continued success."

They were lying on blankets near the foot of the mountain, and the time
was late October. The days were growing cold and the nights colder,
but a fine big fire was blazing before them, and they rejoiced in the
warmth and brightness, shed from the flames and the heaps of glowing
coals.

"I'll venture the prediction," said Pennington, "that our next march is
not against an army, but against guerrillas. They say that up there in
the Alleghanies Slade and Skelly are doing a lot of harm. They may have
to be hunted out and the Winchester men have the best reputation in the
army for that sort of work. We earned it by our work against these very
fellows in Tennessee."

"For which most of the credit is due to Sergeant Whitley," said Dick.
"He's a grand trailer, and he can lead us with certainty, when other
regiments can't find the way."

Dick gaze