up the river.

The corps of Longstreet was to lead the way, and it would march the
next morning. Harry now knew that the army would advance by way of the
Shenandoah valley. The Northern troops had been raiding in the great
valley and again had retaken Winchester, the pleasant little city so
beloved of Jackson. Harry shared the anger at this news that Jackson
would have felt had he been alive to hear it.

Harry was well aware, however, that the army could not slip away from
its opponent. Hooker, still in command, was watching on the heights
across the river, and there were the captive balloons hovering again in
the sky. But the spirit of the troops was such that they did not care
whether their march was known or not.

Harry and Dalton were awake early on the morning of the third of June,
and they saw the corps of Longstreet file silently by, the bugle
that called them away being the first note of the great and decisive
Gettysburg campaign. They were better clothed and in better trim than
they had been in a long time. They walked with an easy, springy gait,
and the big guns rumbled at the heels of the horses, fat from long rest
and the spring grass. They were to march north and west to Culpeper,
fifty miles away, and there await the rest of the army.

Harry and Dalton felt great exhilaration. Movement was good not only
for the body, but for the spirit as well. It made the blood flow more
freely and the brain grow more active. Moreover, the beauty of the
early summer that had come incited one to greater hope.

The great adventure had now begun, but it was not unknown to Hooker and
his watchful generals on the other shore. The ground was dry and they
had seen a column of dust rise and move toward the northwest. Their
experienced eyes told them that such a cloud must be made by marching
troops, and the men in the balloons with their glasses were able to
catch the gleam of steel from the bayonets of Longstreet's men as they
took the long road to Gettysburg.

Hooker had good men with him. He, too, as he stood on the left bank of
the Rappahannock, was surrounded by able and famous generals, and others
were to come. There was Meade, a little older than the others, but not
old, tall, thin, stooped a bit, wearing glasses, and looking like a
scholar, with his pale face and ragged beard, a cold, quiet man, able
and thorough, but without genius. Then came Reynolds, modest and quiet,
who many in the army claimed