shington and Bull Run
there was perfect peace.

The summer passed. Autumn came and deepened. The air was crisp and
sparkling. The leaves, turned into glowing reds and yellows and browns,
began to fall from the trees. The advancing autumn contained the promise
of winter soon to come. The leaves fell faster and sharp winds blew,
bringing with them chill rains. Little Mac, or the Young Napoleon, as
many of his friends loved to call him, continued his preparations, and
despite all the urgings of President and Congress, would not move. His
fatal defect now showed in all its destructiveness. To him the enemy
always appeared threefold his natural size.

Reliable scouts brought back the news that the Southern troops at
Manassas, a full two months after their victory there, numbered only
forty thousand. The Northern commander issued statements that the enemy
was before him with one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers. He demanded
that his own forces should be raised to nearly a quarter of a million
men and nearly five hundred cannon before he could move.

The veteran, Scott, full of triumphs and honors, but feeling himself out
of place in his old age, went into retirement. McClellan, now in sole
command, still lingered and delayed, while the South, making good use of
precious months, gathered all her forces to meet him or whomsoever came
against her.

Youth chafed most against the long waiting. It seemed to Dick and his
mathematical Vermont friend that time was fairly wasting away under
their feet, and the wise sergeant agreed with them.

The weather had grown so cold now that they built fires for warmth as
well as cooking, and the two youths sat with Sergeant Whitley one cold
evening in late October before a big blaze. Both were tanned deeply by
wind, sun and rain, and they had grown uncommonly hardy, but the wind
that night came out of the northwest, and it had such a sharp edge to
it that they were glad to draw their blankets over their backs and
shoulders.

Dick was re-reading a letter from his mother, a widow who lived on the
outskirts of Pendleton. It had come that morning, and it was the only
one that had reached him since his departure from Kentucky. But she had
received another that he had written to her directly after the Battle of
Bull Run.

She wrote of her gratitude because Providence had watched over him in
that dreadful conflict, all the more dreadful because it was friend
against friend, brother against