e country in all
directions, and when Rodney rode into the camp, which was pitched upon a
little rise of ground a short distance from the town, he remarked that
he had never seen a stranger sight. The camp itself was all right. The
tents were properly pitched, the wagons and artillery parked after the
most approved military rules, and all this was to be expected, since the
commanding general was a veteran of the Mexican war; but the men looked
more like a mob than they did like soldiers. There were eight thousand
of them, and not one in ten was provided with a uniform of any sort. The
guard who challenged them carried a double-barrel shotgun, and the only
thing military there was about him, was a rooster's feather stuck in the
band of his hat.

"They're a good deal better than they look," said the captain, when
Rodney called his attention to the fact that the sentry "slouched"
rather than walked over his beat, and that he didn't know how to hold
his gun. "They are not very well drilled yet, but they'll fight, and
that is the main thing. Think of Washington and his ragamuffins at
Valley Forge the next time you feel disposed to criticise the boys."

"Where is the enemy?" inquired Rodney.

"He is supposed to be concentrating twenty thousand men at Springfield,
thirty-five miles east of here." replied the captain. "When McCulloch
gets up from Arkansas we'll have a little more than fifteen thousand.
But that's enough. We'll be in St. Louis in less than a month. That
victory at Bull Run will nerve our boys to do good work when they get at
it. Now where shall I go to find my regiment? The colonel is the man I
want to report to."

While the captain was looking around to find an officer of whom he could
make inquiries, there was a loud clatter of hoofs behind, and a moment
afterward a spruce young fellow, handsomely mounted and wearing a
uniform that Rodney Gray would have recognized anywhere, dashed by and
held on his way without once looking in their direction.

"There he is now," exclaimed the captain, before Rodney had time to
speak. "Oh, sergeant!"

The horseman drew up and turned about just as Rodney's hand was placed
upon his shoulder. The greeting was just such a one as any two boys
would extend to each other under similar circumstances, and so we need
not say any more about it. Rodney and Dick Graham were shaking hands at
last, and two brothers could not have been more delighted.

"How in the world did you get t