eather, after
deceiving for a while with the appearance of spring, had turned cold
again. The enemy's scouts and spies were keeping back, where they could
blow on their cold fingers or walk a while to restore the circulation to
their half frozen legs.

Sherburne was his neat and orderly self again and St. Clair was fully
his equal. Langdon openly boasted that he was going to have a dressing
contest between them for large stakes as soon as the war was over. But
all the young Southerners were in good spirits now. They had learned
of the alarm caused in the North by Kernstown, and that a third of
McClellan's army had been detached to guard against them. Nor had Banks
and Shields yet dared to attack them.

"There's what troubles Banks," said Sherburne, pointing with his saber
to a towering mass of mountains which rose somber and dark in the very
center of the Shenandoah Valley. "He doesn't know which side of the
Massanuttons to take."

Harry looked up at these peaks and ridges, famous now in the minds of
all Virginians, towering a half mile in the air, clothed from base to
summit with dense forest of oak and pine, although today the crests were
wrapped in snowy mists. They cut the Shenandoah valley into two smaller
valleys, the wider and more nearly level one on the west. Only a single
road by which troops could pass crossed the Massanuttons, and that road
was held by the cavalry of Ashby.

"If Banks comes one way and he proves too strong for us we can cross
over to the other," said Sherburne. "If he divides his force, marching
into both valleys, we may beat one part of his army, then pass the
mountain and beat the other."

Sherburne had divined aright. It was the mighty mass of the Massanuttons
that weighed upon Banks. As he looked up at the dark ridges and misty
crests his mind was torn by doubts. His own forces, great in number
though they were, were scattered. Fremont to his right on the slopes
of the Alleghanies had 25,000 men; there were other strong detachments
under Milroy and Schenck, and he had 17,000 men under his own eye. So he
was hesitating while the days were passing and Jackson growing stronger.

"I suppose the nature of the country helps us a lot," said Harry as he
looked up at the Massanuttons, following Sherburne's pointing saber.

"It does, and we need help," said Sherburne. "Even as it is they would
have been pushing upon us if it hadn't been for the cavalry and the
artillery. Every time a detac