This morning the long strain of the night and its battle was relaxed completely.

The grass in the valley was brown with frost, and the trees were shorn of their leaves by the winter winds, but to Dick it was the finest village that he had ever seen, and these were the friendliest people in the world.
He drank a cup of hot coffee handed to him by the stalwart wife of a farmer, and then, when she insisted, drank another.
"You're young to be fightin'," she said sympathetically.
"We all are," said Dick with a glance at the regiment, "but however we may fight you'll never find anybody attacking a breakfast with more valor and spirit than we do." She looked at the long line of lads, drinking coffee and eating ham, bacon, eggs, and hot biscuits, and smiled.
"I reckon you tell the truth, young feller," she said, "but it's good to see 'em go at it." She passed on to help others, and Dick, summoned by Colonel Newcomb, went into a little railroad and telegraph station.

The telegraph wires had been cut behind them, but ten miles across the mountains the spur of another railroad touched a valley.

The second railroad looped toward the north, and it was absolutely sure that it was beyond the reach of Southern raiders.

Colonel Newcomb wished to send a message to the Secretary of War and the President, telling of the night's events and his triumphant passage through the ordeal.