CHAPTER X.
AN UNBEATEN FOE Dick's belief that he would not be allowed to sleep long was justified.
In three or four hours the whole Winchester regiment was up, mounted and away again.

Early and his army left the great valley pike, and took a road leading toward the Blue Ridge, where he eventually entered a gap, and fortified to await supplies and fresh men from Richmond, leaving all the great Valley of Virginia, where in former years the Northern armies had suffered so many humiliations, in the possession of Sheridan.
It was the greatest and most solid triumph that the Union had yet achieved and Dick and the youths with him rejoiced.
After many days of marching and fighting they lay once more in the shadow of the mountains, within a great grove of oak and beech, hickory and maple.

The men and then the horses had drunk at a large brook flowing near by, and both were content.

The North, as always, sent forward food in abundance to its troops, and now, just as the twilight was coming, the fires were lighted and the pleasant aromas of supper were rising.
Colonel Winchester and his young staff sat by one of the fires near the edge of the creek.

They had not taken off their clothes in almost a week, and they felt as if they had been living like cave-men.