ut for a home
give me higher ground, Dick."

"Me too, sir," said Warner. "The finest state in this Union is Vermont.
I like to live on firm soil, even if it isn't so fertile, and I like to
see the clear, pure water running everywhere, brooks and rivers."

"I'll admit that Vermont is a good state for two months in the year,"
said Dick.

"Why not the other ten?"

"Because then it's frozen up, solid and hard, so I've heard."

The other boys laughed and kept up their chaff, but Colonel Winchester
rode soberly ahead. Behind him trailed the Winchester regiment, now
reorganized and mounted. Fresh troops had come from Kentucky, and
fragments of old regiments practically destroyed at Perryville and Stone
River had been joined to it.

It was a splendid body of men, but of those who had gone to Shiloh only
about two hundred remained. The great conflicts of the West, and the
minor battles had accounted for the others. But it was perhaps one of
the reliefs of the Civil War that it gave the lads who fought it little
time to think of those who fell. Four years crowded with battles, great
and small, sieges and marches absorbed their whole attention.

Now two men, the dreaded Forrest and fierce little Joe Wheeler, occupied
the minds of Winchester and his officers. It was impossible to keep
track of these wild horsemen here in their own section. They had a habit
of appearing two or three hundred miles from the place at which they
were expected.

But the young lieutenants while they watched too for their redoubtable
foes had an eye also for the country. It was a new kind of region for
all of them. The feet of their horses sank deep in the soft black soil,
and there was often a sound of many splashings as the regiment rode
across a wide, muddy brook.

Dick noted with interest the magnolias and the live oaks, and the great
stalks of the sunflower. Here in this Southern state, which bathed
its feet in the warm waters of the Gulf, spring was already far along,
although snows still lingered in the North.

The vegetation was extravagant in its luxuriance and splendor. The
enormous forest was broken by openings like prairies, and in every one
of them the grass grew thick and tall, interspersed with sunflowers and
blossoming wild plants. Through the woods ran vast networks of vines,
and birds of brilliant plumage chattered in the trees. Twice, deer
sprang up before them and raced away in the forest. It was the
wilderness almost as De