said Pennington. "If you were to hit me in the stomach I'd
give back a hollow sound like a drum. Why don't somebody ring the supper
bell?"

But fires were soon lighted along their whole front, and provisions were
brought up from the rear and from the steamers. The soldiers, feeling
their strength returning, ate ravenously. They also talked much of
the battle. Many of them were yet under the influence of hysterical
excitement. They told extraordinary stories of the things they had seen
and done, and they believed all they told were true. They ate fiercely,
at first almost like wolves, but after a while they resolved into their
true state as amiable young human beings and were ashamed of themselves.

All the while Buell's army of the Ohio was passing over the river and
joining Grant's army of the Tennessee. Regiment after regiment and
brigade after brigade crossed. The guns that Nelson had been forced to
leave behind were also brought up and were taken over with the other
batteries. While the shattered remnants of the army of the Tennessee
were resting, the fresh army of the Ohio was marching by it in the late
hours of the night in order to face the Southern foe in the morning.

The Southern army itself lay deep in the woods from which it had driven
its enemy. Always the assailant through the day, its losses had been
immense. Many thousands had fallen, and no new troops were coming to
take their place. Continual reinforcements came to the North throughout
the night, not a soldier came to the South. Beauregard, at dawn, would
have to face twice his numbers, at least half of whom were fresh troops.

Another conference was held by the Southern generals in the forest,
but now the central figure, the great Johnston, was gone. The others,
however, summoned their courage anew, and passed the whole night
arranging their forces, cheering the men, and preparing for the morn.
Their scouts and skirmishers kept watch on the Northern camp, and the
Southerners believed that while they had whipped only one army the day
before, they could whip two on the morrow.

Dick and his friends meanwhile were lying on the earth, resting, but not
able to sleep. The nerves, drawn so tightly by the day's work, were not
yet relaxed wholly. A deep apathy seized them all. Dick, from a high
point on which he lay, saw the dark surface of the Tennessee, and the
lights on the puffing steamers as they crossed, bearing the Army of the
Ohio. His mind did not