hat's good as a general proposition," said Warner, "but I was merely
cautioning him not to be too enthusiastic. What kind of a country, Dick,
is this into which we are going?"

"Hilly, lots of forests, particularly of cedar, and brooks, creeks and
rivers. Murfreesborough itself is right on Lytle's Creek. Bragg will
meet us at the line of Stone River."

"Maybe they'll retreat and go eastward to Chattanooga," said Pennington.

"I think we'd better dismiss that 'maybe,'" said Dick. "You haven't
heard of the rebels running away from battles, have you?"

"What I've generally seen, in the beginning at least," said Warner, "is
the rebels running toward us, jumping out of the woods and yelling like
Indians. I have seldom found it a pleasant sight. I'm glad, too, Dick,
that Stonewall Jackson isn't here. Do you see that big cedar forest over
there on the hillside? Suppose he should come rushing out of it with
twenty or twenty-five thousand men."

"Stop," said Pennington. "You give me the shivers, talking about
Stonewall Jackson swooping down on us with an army corps, when happily
he's four or five hundred miles away. I'm seeing enough unfriendly
faces as it is. Look how the people in this village are glaring at us.
Fellows, I've decided after due consideration that they don't love us
here in Tennessee. If you were to ask me I'd say that blue was not their
favorite color."

"At any rate we don't stay long. Good-bye, friends, good-bye," said
Warner, waving his hand toward two or three men who stood in the door of
an old blacksmith shop.

"You laugh, young feller," said a gnarled and knotted old man past
eighty, "an' mebbe it's as well for you to laugh while you have the time
to do it in. Mebbe you'll never come back from Stone River, an' if
you do, an' if you win everywhere, remember that we, too, will yet win
everywhere."

"What do you mean by that?"

"All the Yankees, whether they win or not, will have to go back north,
except them that are dead, an' we'll be here right on top of the lan',
livin' on it, an' runnin' it, same as we've always done."

"I hadn't thought of that," said Warner soberly.

"There's a power of things the young don't think of," said the ancient
man. "Mebbe the South can be whipped, but she can't be moved. She'll
always be here. People hev made a war. I don't know who started it. I
reckon there's been some powerful mean an' hot talk on both sides. I
knowed great men that seed this very thing comi