Dick looked at him with renewed interest.

He was a man of middle years, but with all the strength and elasticity of youth.

Despite his thick coat of tan he was naturally fair, and Dick noticed that his hands were the largest that he had ever seen on any human being.

They seemed to the boy to have in them the power to strangle a bear.

But the man was singularly mild and gentle in his manner.
"We're about half way to Washington, I judge," he said, "an' I expect a lot of our camp followers and grass-green men are all the way there by now, tellin' Abe Lincoln an' everybody else that a hundred thousand rebels fell hard upon us on the plain of Manassas." He laughed deep down in his throat and Dick again drew courage and cheerfulness from one who had such a great store of both.
"How did it happen?
Our defeat, I mean," asked Dick.