their proper places.

The weather was extremely cold, but they were prepared for it, and when
they swung up the valley, and forty thousand hoofs beat on the hard road,
giving back a sound like thunder, their pulses leaped, and they took with
delight deep draughts of the keen frosty air.

While they carried food for the entire march, the rest of their equipment
was light, four cannon, ammunition wagons, some ambulances and pontoon
boats. Dick thought they would make fast time, but fortune for awhile
was against them. The very morning the great column started the weather
rapidly turned warmer, and then a heavy rain began to fall. The hard
road upon which the forty thousand hoofs had beat their marching song
turned to mud, and forty thousand hoofs made a new sound, as they sank
deep in it, and were then pulled out again.

"If it keeps us from going fast," said the philosophical sergeant,
"it'll keep them that we're goin' after from gettin' away. We're as
good mud horses as they are."

"Do you think we'll go through to Staunton?" asked Dick of Warner.

"I've heard that we will, and that we'll go on and take Lynchburg too.
Then we're to curve about and in North Carolina join Sherman who has
smashed the Confederacy in the west."

"I don't like the North Carolina part," said Dick. "I hope we'll go to
Grant and march with him on Richmond, because that's where the death blow
will be dealt, if it's dealt at all."

"And that it will be dealt we don't doubt, neither you, nor I nor any of
us."

"Yes, that's so."

While mud and rain could impede the progress of the great column they
could not stop it. Neither could they dampen the spirits of the young
troopers who rode knee to knee, and who looked forward to new victories.
Through the floods of rain the ten thousand, scouts and skirmishers
on their flanks, swept southward, and they encountered no foe. A few
Southern horsemen would watch them at a great distance and then ride
sadly away. There was nothing in the valley that could oppose Sheridan.

Dick's leggings, and his overcoat with an extremely high collar, kept
him dry and warm and he was too seasoned to mind the flying mud which
thousands of hoofs sent up, and which soon covered them. The swift
movement and the expectation of achieving something were exhilarating
in spite of every hardship and obstacle.

That night they reached the village of Woodstock, and the next day they
crossed the north fork of the S