Talbot gravely, "but I have always known that beneath this
superficiality of manner was a brave and honest heart. I'm glad to see
that your courage is so high."

"Thank you, sir," said Happy sincerely.

Half way up the mountain they found the dip they wished, sheltered by
cedars and pines. Here they rested and ate, and from their covert saw
many lights burning in the valley. But they knew they were the lights
of the victorious foe, and they would not look that way often.

The October winds were cold, and they had lost their blankets, but the
dry leaves lay in heaps, and they raked them up for beds. The lads,
worn to the bone, fell asleep, and, after a while, only the two colonels
remained awake.

"I do not feel sleepy at all, Hector," said Colonel Leonidas Talbot.

"I could not possibly sleep, Leonidas," said Lieutenant Colonel
St. Hilaire.

"Then shall we?"

"Why not?"

Colonel Talbot produced from under his coat a small board, and Lieutenant
Colonel St. Hilaire took from under his own coat a small box.

They put the board upon a broad stone, arranged the chessmen, as they
were at the latest interruption, and, as the moonlight came through the
dwarfed pines and cedars, the two gray heads bent over the game.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE COVE

General Sheridan permitted the Winchester men to rest a long time,
or rather he ordered them to do so. No regiment had distinguished itself
more at Cedar Creek or in the previous battles, and it was best for it to
lie by a while, and recover its physical strength--strength of the spirit
it had never lost. It also gave a needed chance to the sixteen slight
wounds accumulated by Dick, Pennington and Warner to heal perfectly.

"Unless something further happens," said Warner, regretfully, "I won't
have a single honorable scar to take back with me and show in Vermont."

"I'll have one slight, though honorable, scar, but I won't be able to
show it," said Pennington, also with regret.

"I trust that it's in front, Frank," said Dick.

"It is, all right. Don't worry about that. But what about you, Dick?"

"I had hopes of a place on my left arm just above the elbow. A bullet,
traveling at the rate of a million miles a minute, broke the skin there
and took a thin flake of flesh with it, but I'm so terribly healthy it's
healed up without leaving a trace."

"There's no hope for us," said Warner, sighing. "We can never point to
the proof of our warlike deeds. Yo