hen I lie unconscious on the field, in the rain,
until some good friend comes along, takes me away on his back and puts
me in a warm bed. It's a lot safer than staying in your hospital all the
time.'"

"Oh, shut up, George! Come and see the boys. They'll be glad to know
you're back--what's left of 'em."

Warner's welcome was in truth warm. He seemed more phlegmatic than ever,
but he opened his eyes wide when they told him of the dispatch that had
been lost and found.

"General McClellan must have been waiting for me," he said. "Tell him
I've come."

But General McClellan did not yet move. The last long hour of the day
passed. The sun set in red and gold behind the western mountains, and
the Army of the Potomac still rested in its camp, although privates even
knew that precious hours were being lost, and that booming cannon might
already be telling the defenders of Harper's Ferry that Jackson was at
hand.

Nor were they far wrong. While McClellan lingered on through the night,
never moving from his camp, Jackson and his generals were pushing
forward with fiery energy and at dawn the next day had surrounded
Harper's Ferry and its doomed garrison of more than twelve thousand men.

But these were things that Dick could not guess that night. One small
detachment had been sent ahead by McClellan, chiefly for scouting
purposes, and in the darkness the boy who had gone a little distance
forward with Colonel Winchester heard the booming of cannon. It was a
faint sound but unmistakable, and Dick glanced at his chief.

"That detachment has come into contact with the rebels somewhere there
in the mountains," he said, "and the ridges and valleys are bringing us
the echoes. Oh, why in Heaven's name are we delayed here through all the
precious moments! Every hour's delay will cost the lives of ten thousand
good men!"

And it is likely that in the end Colonel Winchester's reckoning was
too moderate. He and Dick gazed long in the direction in which Harper's
Ferry lay, and they listened, too, to the faint mutter of the guns among
the hills. Before dawn, scouts came in, saying that there had been hard
fighting off toward Harper's Ferry, and that Lee with the other division
of the Southern army was retreating into a peninsula formed by the
junction of the river Antietam with the Potomac, where he would await
the coming of Jackson, after taking Harper's Ferry.

"Jackson hasn't taken Harper's Ferry yet," said Dick, when he heard t