e've eaten."

Dick was the last of the officers to dismount. He, too, did not remember
how long they had been in the saddle. He could not say at that moment,
whether it had been one night or two. He ate and drank mechanically, but
hungrily--the Union army nearly always had plenty of stores--and then he
felt better and stronger.

A faint bluish tint was appearing under the gray horizon in the east.
Dick felt the touch of a light wind on his forehead. The dawn was
coming.

Yes, the dawn was coming, but it was coming heavy with sinister omens
and the frown of battle. Before the bluish tint in the east had turned
to silver Dick heard the faint and far thudding of great guns, and
closer a heavy regular beat which he knew was the gallop of cavalry.
Surely the North could not fail now. Fierce anger against those who
would break up the Union surged up in him again.

The gray came at last, driving the bluish tint away, and the sun rose
hot and bright over the field of Manassas which already had been
stained with the blood of one fierce battle. But now the armies were far
greater. Nearly a hundred and fifty thousand men were gathering for the
combat, and Dick was still hoping that McClellan would come with seventy
or eighty thousand more. But within the Confederate lines, where they
must always win and never lose, because losing meant to lose all there
was a stern determination to shatter Pope and his superior numbers
before McClellan could come. Never had the genius and resolution of the
two great Southern leaders burned more brightly.

As the brazen sun swung slowly up Dick felt that the intense nervous
excitement he had felt the night before was seizing him again. The
officers of the regiment remained on foot. Colonel Winchester had sent
their horses away to some cavalrymen who had lost their own. He and his
staff and other officers, dismounted, could lead the men better into
battle.

And that it was battle, great and bloody, the youngest of them all could
see. Never had an August day been brighter and hotter. Every object
seemed to swell into new size in the vivid and burning sunlight. Plain
before them lay Jackson's army. Two of his regiments were between them
and a turnpike that Dick remembered well. Off to the left ran the dark
masses in gray, until they ended against a thick wood. In the center was
a huge battery, and Dick from his position could see the mouths of the
cannon waiting for them.

But he also saw the