rts. The valley was twenty miles wide before they came
to the Massanuttons, but after the division the western extension for
some distance was not more than four miles across, and it was here that
they were going. At the narrower part, on Fisher's Hill, Early had
strong fortifications, defended by his finest infantry, and Colonel
Winchester did not deem it likely that Sheridan would make a frontal
attack upon a position so well defended.

It was about noon when the cavalry arrived before the Southern works.
Dick, through his glasses, clearly saw the guns and columns of infantry,
and also a body of Southern horse, drawn up on one flank of the hill.
He fancied that the Invincibles were among them, but at the distance he
could not pick them from the rest.

The regiment remained stationary, awaiting the orders of Sheridan,
and Dick still used his glasses. He swept them again and again across
the Confederate lines, and then he turned his attention to the mountains
which here hemmed in the valley to such a straitened width. He saw a
signal station of the enemy on a culminating ridge called Three Top
Mountain, and as the flags there were waving industriously he knew that
every movement of the Union army would be communicated to Early's troops
below.

Yet the whole scene despite the fact that it was war, red war, appealed
to Dick's sense of the romantic and beautiful. The fertile valley looked
picturesque with its woods and fields, and on either side rose the ranges
as if to protect it. Mountains like trees always appealed to him,
and the steep slopes were wooded densely. Lower down they were brown,
with touches of green that yet lingered, but higher up the glowing reds
and golds of autumn were beginning to appear. The wind that blew down
from the crests was full of life.

Sheridan arrived and, riding before the center of his army, looked long
and well at the Southern defenses. Then he called his generals, and some
of the colonels, including Winchester, and held a brief council.

"It means," said Warner, while the colonel was yet away at the meeting,
"that we won't fight any this afternoon, but that we'll do a lot of
riding tonight. That position is too strong to be attacked. It would
cost us too many men to take it straight away, but having seen a specimen
of Little Phil's quality we know that he'll try something else."

"You mean get on their flank," said Dick. "Maybe we can make a passage
along the slopes o