l bring Bremerton into the centre of our
line, with the forces toward Newville making a sort of a triangular
wedge stuck out in front. That wedge, you see, will have the whole army
as a reserve. It isn't as favorable a situation as if they had made for
Cripple Creek, for there we would have been in a position to force them
back on Smithville, where they mobilized."

"They'd have gone right into a trap if they had kept on for Newville,
wouldn't they?"

"Yes; but that was too much for us to hope for, really. It's good enough
as it is. It was General Harkness's plan from the first to make a stand
at Bremerton, unless they gave him the chance to make it an offensive
campaign. The mistake we made in sending a brigade to Cripple Creek more
than made up for the capture of Hardport, however, and so we lost that
chance. If we could have made sure of Newville to-night, nothing could
have saved the Blue army."

"Who's to blame for that, Jack?"

"No one. You can't expect the enemy to tell you what he's going to do,
and even Napoleon couldn't always guess right. I think we'll beat them
all right--that is, I don't think they'll get within twenty miles of the
capital in the time they've got, even if we get badly beaten in this
battle that's starting now."

"Here we are at the cross roads, Jack. Which way are you going now?"

"Toward Mardean, at first. I'm going to swing in a great big circle
around Hardport, and way beyond it. I want to come down on them from
behind and see just as much as I can."

"If you swing very far around that way it'll take you pretty near
Smithville, won't it?"

"That's just where I want to get, Tom. The place to find out what the
enemy is going to do is the place where he is doing it, it seems to me."

Hardport, a patch of light against the sky, held little interest for
Jack. The road he took swung back toward the State line, so that he
passed very near Hardport before he reached the road that he and Tom had
first traveled when they crossed the line at full speed after war had
been declared. But Mardean wasn't held by the enemy now. The troops that
had crossed there had been recalled after the capture of Hardport and
the wreck of the early Blue plans, and some of them probably were in
Hardport now as prisoners of war, but with none of the rigors commonly
attaching to imprisonment to distress them.

"This road is safer than it was when we took it before," said Jack.
"Remember how we had to take to