Grant from his station at
Corinth, in Mississippi, he was at the head of a hundred thousand men,
and Bragg could not muster more than half as many.

So rapid had been the passage of events that Dick found himself a member
of Buell's reorganized army, and ready to march, only thirteen days
after the sun set on the bloody field of Antietam, seven hundred miles
away. Bragg, they said, was at Lexington, in the heart of the state, and
the Union army was in motion to punish him for his temerity in venturing
out of the far south.

Dick felt a great elation as he rode once more over the soil of his
native state. He beheld again many of the officers whom he had seen at
Donelson, and also he spoke to General Buell, who although as taciturn
and somber as ever, remembered him.

Warner and Pennington were by his side, the colonel rode before, and the
Winchester regiment marched behind. Volunteers from Kentucky and other
states had raised it to about three hundred men, and the new lads
listened with amazement, while the unbearded veterans told them of
Shiloh, the Second Manassas and Antietam.

"Good country, this of yours, Dick," said Warner, as they rode through
the rich lands east of Louisville. "Worth saving. I'm glad the doctor
ordered me west for my health."

"He didn't order you west for your health," said Pennington. "He ordered
you west to get killed for your country."

"Well, at any rate, I'm here, and as I said, this looks like a land
worth saving."

"It's still finer when you get eastward into the Bluegrass," said Dick,
"but it isn't showing at its best. I never before saw the ground looking
so burnt and parched. They say it's the dryest summer known since the
country was settled eighty or ninety years ago."

Dick hoped that their line of march would take them near Pendleton, and
as it soon dropped southward he saw that his hope had come true. They
would pass within twenty miles of his mother's home, and at Dick's
urgent and repeated request, Colonel Winchester strained a point and
allowed him to go. He was permitted to select a horse of unusual power
and speed, and he departed just before sundown.

"Remember that you're to rejoin us to-morrow," said Colonel Winchester.
"Beware of guerillas. I hope you'll find your mother well."

"I feel sure of it, and I shall tell her how very kind and helpful
you've been to me, sir."

"Thank you, Dick."

Dick, in his haste to be off did not notice that the colonel's voice