h the
blue smoke rising from its chimney into the clear, wintry air, and
small and poor as they were they gave him a singular sense of peace and
comfort. His mind felt for a few moments a strong reaction from war and
its terrors, but the impulse and the strong purpose that bore him on
soon came back.

The train rushed through a pass and entered a sheltered valley a mile or
two wide and eight or ten miles long. A large creek ran through it, and
the train stopped at a village on its banks. The whole population of the
village and all the farmers of the valley were there to meet them. It
was a Union valley and by some system of mountain telegraphy, although
there were no telegraph wires, news of the battle at the ford had
preceded the train.

"Come, lads," said Colonel Newcomb to his staff. "Out with you! We're
among friends here!"

Dick and Warner were glad enough to leave the train. The air, cold as it
was, was like the breath of heaven on their faces, and the cheers of
the people were like the trump of fame in their ears. Pretty girls with
their faces in red hoods or red comforters were there with food and
smoking coffee. Medicines for the wounded, as much as the village could
supply, had been brought to the train, and places were already made for
those hurt too badly to go on with the expedition.

The whole cheerful scene, with its life and movement, the sight of new
faces and the sound of many voices, had a wonderful effect upon young
Dick Mason. He had a marvellously sensitive temperament, a direct
inheritance from his famous border ancestor, Paul Cotter. Things were
always vivid to him. Either they glowed with color, or they were hueless
and dead. This morning the long strain of the night and its battle was
relaxed completely. The grass in the valley was brown with frost, and
the trees were shorn of their leaves by the winter winds, but to Dick
it was the finest village that he had ever seen, and these were the
friendliest people in the world.

He drank a cup of hot coffee handed to him by the stalwart wife of a
farmer, and then, when she insisted, drank another.

"You're young to be fightin'," she said sympathetically.

"We all are," said Dick with a glance at the regiment, "but however
we may fight you'll never find anybody attacking a breakfast with more
valor and spirit than we do."

She looked at the long line of lads, drinking coffee and eating ham,
bacon, eggs, and hot biscuits, and smiled.

"I rec