I'm glad the doctor ordered me west for my health." "He didn't order you west for your health," said Pennington.

"He ordered you west to get killed for your country." "Well, at any rate, I'm here, and as I said, this looks like a land worth saving." "It's still finer when you get eastward into the Bluegrass," said Dick, "but it isn't showing at its best.

I never before saw the ground looking so burnt and parched.

They say it's the dryest summer known since the country was settled eighty or ninety years ago." Dick hoped that their line of march would take them near Pendleton, and as it soon dropped southward he saw that his hope had come true.

They would pass within twenty miles of his mother's home, and at Dick's urgent and repeated request, Colonel Winchester strained a point and allowed him to go.