perhaps the same. To youth a year is a long time, and two years are
almost a life time. Three years and more of it had made war to them a
normal state. They had not thought much before of an end to the great
struggle between North and South, and of what was to come after. Now
they realized that peace, not war, was normal, and that it must return.

The moonlight faded and then the stars were dimmed, as the darkness that
precedes the dawn came. The silvery veil that had been thrown over
them vanished and the column became a ghostly train riding in the dusk.
But the road into which Shepard guided them led over a pleasant land
of hills and clear streams. Although the scouts on their flanks kept
vigilant watch, many of the men slept soundly in their saddles. Dick
himself dozed awhile, and slept awhile, and, when he roused himself from
his last nap, the dawn was breaking over the brown hills and the column
was halting for food and a little rest.

It was August, the time of great heat in Virginia, but they were already
building fires to cook the breakfast and make coffee, and most of the
men had dismounted. Dick sprang down also and turned his horse loose to
graze with the others. Then he joined Warner and Pennington and fell
hungrily to work. When he thought of it afterward he could scarcely
remember a time in the whole war when he was not hungry.

The sense of unreality disappeared with the brilliant dawn, though the
night itself with the battle in the moonlight seemed to be almost a
dream. Yet the combat had been fought, and he had met Harry Kenton and
his friends. The empty saddles proved it.

"I see a great country opening out before us," said Warner. "I suppose
it's this Valley of Virginia, of which we've all heard and seen so much,