And if you do write
a letter the next best thing is to burn it as quick as you can."

"If my eyes tell the truth, and they do," said Pennington, "here comes
a short, thick man riding a long, thick horse and he--the man, not the
horse--bears a startling resemblance to our friend, ally, guide and
sometime mentor, Sergeant Daniel Whitley."

"Yes, it's the sergeant," said Dick, looking down into the valley, "and
I'm glad he's joining us. Do you know, boys, I often think these veteran
sergeants know more than some of our generals."

"It's not an opinion. It's a fact," said Warner. "Hi, there, sergeant!
Here are your friends! Come up and make the same empty report that we've
got ready for the colonel."

Sergeant Daniel Whitley looked at the three lads, and his face
brightened. He had a good intellect under his thatch of hair, and a warm
heart within his strong body. The boys, although lieutenants, and he
only a sergeant in the ranks, treated him usually as an equal and often
as a superior.

Colonel Winchester's regiment and the remains of Colonel Newcomb's
Pennsylvanians had been sent east after the defeat of the Union army at
the Seven Days, and were now with Pope's Army of Virginia, which was to
hold the valley and also protect Washington. Grant's success at
Shiloh had been offset by McClellan's failure before Richmond, and the
President and his Cabinet at Washington were filled with justifiable
alarm. Pope was a western man, a Kentuckian, and he had insisted upon
having some of the western troops with him.

The sergeant rode his horse slowly up the slope, and joined the lads
over whom he watched like a father.

"And what have the hundred eyes of Argus beheld?" asked Warner.

"Argus?" said the sergeant. "I don't know any such man. Name sounds
queer, too."

"He belongs to a distant and mythical past, sergeant, but he'd be mighty
useful if we had him here. If even a single one of his hundred eyes were
to light on Stonewall Jackson, it would be a great service."

The sergeant shook his head and looked reprovingly at Warner.

"It ain't no time for jokin'," he said.

"I was never further from it. It seems to me that we need a lot of
Arguses more than anything else. This is the enemy's country, and we
hear that Stonewall Jackson is advancing. Advancing where, from what and
when? There is no Argus to tell. The country supports a fairly numerous
population, but it hasn't a single kind or informing word for us. Is
St