It arrived in a telegram to General Grant, and
I heard it just as we were coming on board."

"What is it?" asked Dick.

"General Lee was defeated in a great battle at a little place called
Gettysburg in Pennsylvania, and has retreated into Virginia."

"Gettysburg and Vicksburg!" exclaimed Dick. "The wheel has turned nearly
'round. The Confederacy is doomed now."

"I think so, too," said Warner.

CHAPTER XII. AN AFFAIR OF THE MOUNTAINS

Although they were on board one of the fastest steamers in the Union
service, Dick and his comrades had a long journey by river. But it
was not unpleasant. They enjoyed the rest and ease after the weeks of
fighting and service in the trenches before Vicksburg. The absence of
war and the roar of cannon and rifles was like a happy dream between
days of fighting. As they went northward on the great river it almost
seemed as if peace had returned.

Warner studied his algebra and two other books of mathematics which he
was lucky enough to find on board. Pennington slept a great deal of the
time.

"I learned it on the plains from the Indians," he said. "When they don't
have anything to do they sleep and gather strength for the hour of need.
I think the time is coming soon when they won't let me sleep at all, and
then I can draw on the great supply I have in stock."

"Likely enough it's near," said Dick dreamily. "They say Bragg has a
great army now, and you know that, while Rosecrans is slow he's pretty
sure. Thomas and McCook and the others are with him, too. I expect to
see 'Pap' Thomas again. He's a general to my liking."

"And to mine, too," said Pennington, "but we can talk about him later
on, because I'm going to sleep again inside of a minute."

Dick was not averse to silence, as he, too, was half asleep; that is, he
was in a dreamy stage, and he was at peace with the world and his fellow
men. From under drooping eyelids he was vaguely watching the low shores
of the Mississippi, and the great mass of yellow waters moving onward
from the far vague forests of the North in their journey of four
thousand miles to the gulf.

Like all boys of the great valley, Dick always felt the romance and
spell of the Mississippi. It was to him and them one of the greatest
facts in the natural world, the grave of De Soto, the stream on which
their fathers and forefathers had explored and traded and fought since
their beginnings. Now it was fulfilling its titanic role again, and the
U