Distance had been nothing to him.

He was at hand with a great force, and Lee with another army might fall at any time upon their flank, while McClellan was isolated and left useless, far away.
Dick's heart missed a beat or two, as he saw the sinister picture that he had created in his own mind.

Highly imaginative, he had leaped to the conclusion that Lee and Jackson meant to trap the Union army, the hammer beating it out on the anvil.

He raised the glasses to his eyes, surveyed the forests in the South once more, and then his heart missed another beat.
He had caught the flash of steel, the sun's rays falling across a bayonet or a polished rifle barrel.

And then as he looked he saw the flash again and again.