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 brother. The state, she said, was all
in confusion. Everybody suspected everybody else. The Southerners were
full of victory, the Northerners were hopeful of victory yet to come.