t the
dryness and the dust. They had tasted so much of defeat and drawn battle
in the east that they had an actual physical sense of better things in
the west. The horizons were wider, the mountains were lower, and there
was not so much enveloping forest. They did not have the strangling
sensation, mental only, which came from the fear that hostile armies
would suddenly rush from the woods and fall upon their flank.

Besides, there was Shiloh. After all, they had won Shiloh, and the
coming of this very Buell who led them now had enabled them to win it.
And Shiloh was the only great battle that they had yet really won.

They camped that night in the dry fields. The Winchester regiment was a
part of the division under McCook, while Buell with the rest of the army
was some miles away. It was still warm, although October was now seven
days old, and Dick had never before heard the grass and leaves rustle
so dryly under the wind. Off in the direction of Perryville they saw
the dim gleam of red, and they knew it came from the camp-fires of the
Southern army. Buell had in his detached divisions sixty thousand
men, most of them veterans and Dick believed that if they were brought
together victory was absolutely sure on the morrow.

The troops around the Winchester regiment were lads from Ohio, and they
affiliated readily. Most of the new men were in these Ohio regiments,
and Dick, Warner and Frank felt themselves ancient veterans who could
talk to the recruits and give them good advice. And the recruits took
it in the proper spirit. They looked up with admiration to those who had
been at Shiloh, and the Second Manassas and Antietam.

Dick thought their spirit remarkable. They were not daunted at all by
the great failures in the east. They did not discount the valor of the
Southern troops, but they asked to be led against them.

"Come over here," said one of the Ohio boys to Dick. "Ahead of us and
on the side there's rough ground with thick woods and deep ravines. I'll
show you something just at the edge of the woods. Bring your friends
with you."

The twilight had already turned to night and Dick, calling Warner and
Pennington, went with his new friend. There, flowing from under a great
stone, shaded by a huge oak, was a tiny stream of pure cold water a
couple of inches deep but seven or eight inches broad. Under the stone
a beautiful basin a foot and a half across and about as deep had been
chiselled out.

"A lot of us