nything in front of them all to pieces."

"Grant," said Lee, "that's just what they can do. Santa Anna has posted
his artillery at Crawford's zigzags, and that Cerro Gordo position
cannot be carried in front. It is perfectly unassailable."

"What on earth are we to do, then?" said Grant. "Our only road to Mexico
seems to be shut and bolted."

"I don't know about that," said Lee. "There are others, if we chose to
try them. But the general has ordered me, with an engineer party, to go
out and find if there is not some way for getting around Santa Anna's
obstructions. I want you to let Crawford go with me."

"O Lieutenant Grant!" eagerly exclaimed Ned, "General Zuroaga told me
there was another place as good for a road as that is."

"Go along, of course," said Grant. "I'd give a month's pay to go with
you. Anything but this sleepy camp."

Ned was ready in a minute, but he found that he was not expected to
carry with him any other weapon than his machete.

"Take that," said Captain Lee. "It will do to cut bushes with. I believe
I'll carry one myself. We shall have a few riflemen, but we must be
careful not to do any firing. We must scout like so many red Indians."

Ned had formerly been on the wrong side of the army lines. During all
the long months of what he sometimes thought of as his captivity among
the Mexicans, he had been occasionally worried by a feeling of disgrace.
He had felt it worst when he was a member of the garrison of Vera Cruz,
and on such remarkably good terms with the rest of the garrison and its
commander. So he had been exceedingly rejoiced when General Scott
battered down his walls and compelled him to surrender. It had been a
grand restoration of his self-respect when he found himself running
errands for the officers of the Seventh, but now he suddenly felt that
he had shot up into full-grown manhood, for, with a bush-cutting sword
at his side, he was to accompany one of the best officers in the
American army upon an expedition of great importance and much danger.

It was still early in the day when Captain Lee's party, all on foot,
passed through the outer lines of the American advance, at the base of
the mountain. All of them were young men, as yet without any military
fame, and there was no one there who could tell them that their little
band of roadhunters contained one commander-in-chief and one
lieutenant-general of the armies of the Southern Confederacy, and one
commander-in-chief and