"Try the glasses for a moment, Dick," said Colonel Newcomb, as he passed
them to the boy.

Dick swept them across the South in a great semi-circle, and now new
objects rose upon the surface of the earth. He saw distinctly the
long chain of the Blue Ridge rising on the west, then blurring in the
distance into a solid black rampart. In the south he saw a long curving
line of rising blue plumes. It did not need Colonel Newcomb to tell him
that these were the campfires of the army that they had met on the field
of Bull Run, and that the Southern troops were now cooking their suppers.

No doubt his cousin Harry was there and perhaps others whom he knew.
The fires seemed to Dick a defiance to the Union. Well, in view of
their victory, the defiance was justified, and those fires might come
nearer yet. Dick, catching the tone of older men who shared his views,
had not believed at first that the rebellion would last long, but his
opinion was changing fast, and the talk of wise Sergeant Whitley was
helping much in that change.

While he yet looked through the glasses he saw a plume of white smoke
coming swiftly towards the Southern fires. Then he remembered the two
lines of railroad that met on the battlefield, giving it its other name,
Manassas Junction, and he knew that the smoke came from an engine
pulling cars loaded with supplies for their foes.

He whispered of the train as he handed the glasses back to Colonel
Newcomb, and then the colonel and the generals alike made a long
examination.

"Beauregard will certainly have an abundance of supplies," said one of