Colonel Winchester joined the group, and stood waiting in silence to receive orders, too, Dick supposed.
The lad withdrew hastily, but driven by an overmastering curiosity, and knowing that he was doing no harm, he turned back and watched for a little space beside a bush.
The flame of the candle wavered under the wind, and sometimes the light shone full upon the face of Thomas.

It was the same face that Dick had first beheld when he carried the dispatches to him in Kentucky.

He was calm, inscrutable at this, the most desperate crisis the Union cause ever knew in the west.

Dick could not see that his hand trembled a particle as he wrote, although lieutenant and general alike knew that they would soon be attacked by a superior force, flushed with all the high enthusiasm of victory.

And lieutenant and general alike also knew that their supreme commander, Rosecrans, was no genius like Lee or Jackson, who could set numbers at naught, and choose time and place to suit themselves.