The President called for five hundred thousand men this time. The joy
and glory of war had gone.

But war remained.

War grim, gaunt, stark, hideous--as remorseless as death.

CHAPTER XXXIX

In a foliage-embowered house on a hill near Washington Colonel Jeb
Stuart, Commander of the Confederate Cavalry, had made his headquarters.

Neighing horses were hitched to the swaying limbs. They pawed the
ground, wheeled and whinnied their impatience at inaction. Every man who
sat in one of those saddles owned his mount. These boys were the flower
of Southern manhood. The Confederate Government was too poor to furnish
horses for the Cavalry. Every man, volunteering for this branch of the
service, must bring his own horse and equipment complete. The South only
furnished a revolver and carbine. At the first battle of Bull Run they
didn't have enough of them even for the regiments Stuart commanded.
Whole companies were armed only with the pikes which John Brown had made
for the swarming of the Black Bees at Harper's Ferry. They used these
pikes as lances.

The thing that gave the Confederate Cavalry its impetuous dash, its fire
and efficiency was the fact that every man on horseback had been born
in the saddle and had known his horse from a colt. From the moment they
swung into line they were veterans.

The North had no such riders in the field as yet. Brigadier-General
Phillip St. George Cooke was organizing this branch of the service. It
would take weary months to train new riders and break in strange horses.

Until these born riders, mounted on their favorites, could be killed or
their horses shot from under them, there would be tough work ahead for
the Union Cavalry.

A farmer approached at sunset. He gazed on the array with pride.

He lifted his gray head and shouted:

"Hurrah for our boys! Old Virginia'll show 'em before we're through with
this!"

A sentinel saluted the old man.

"I've come for Colonel Stuart. His wife and babies are at my house.
He'll understand. Tell him."

The farmer watched the spectacle. Straight in front of the little
portico on its tall staff fluttered the Commander's new, blood-red
battle flag with its blue St. Andrew's cross and white stars rippling
in the wind. Spurs were clanking, sabers rattling. A courier dashed up,
dismounted and entered the house. Young officers in their new uniforms
were laughing and chatting in groups before the door.

An escort brought in a Federal C