Chapter II. The Mountain Lights

When Dick left the balloon it was nearly night. Hundreds of campfires lighted up the hills about him, but beyond their circle the darkness enclosed everything. He still felt the sensations of one who had been at a great height and who had seen afar. That rim of Southern campfires was yet in his mind, and he wondered why the Northern commander allowed them to remain week after week so near the capital. He was fully aware, because it was common talk, that the army of the Union had now reached great numbers, with a magnificent equipment, and, with four to one, should be able to drive the Southern force away. Yet McClellan delayed.

Dick obtained a short leave of absence, and walked to a campfire, where he knew he would find his friend, George Warner. Sergeant Whitley was there, too, showing some young recruits how to cook without waste, and the two gave the boy a welcome that was both inquisitive and hearty.

"You've been up in the balloon," said Warner. "It was a rare chance."

"Yes," replied Dick with a laugh, "I left the world, and it is the only way in which I wish to leave it for the next sixty or seventy years. It was a wonderful sight, George, and not the least wonderful thing in it was the campfires of the Southern army, burning down there towards Bull Run."

"Burnin' where they ought not to be," said Whitley--no gulf was yet established between commissioned and non-commissioned officers in either army. "Little Mac may be a great organizer, as they say, but you can keep on organizin' an' organizin', until it's too late to do what you want to do."

"It's a sound principle that you lay down, Mr. Whitley," said Warner in his precise tones. "In fact, it may be reduced to a mathematical formula. Delay is always a minus quantity which may be represented by y. Achievement is represented by x, and, consequently, when you have achievement hampered by delay you have x minus y, which is an extremely doubtful quantity, often amounting to failure."

"I travel another road in my reckonin's," said Whitley, "I don't know anything about x and y, but I guess you an' me, George, come to the same place. It's been a full six weeks since Bull Run, an' we haven't done a thing."

Whitley, despite their difference in rank, could not yet keep from addressing the boys by their first names. But they took it as a matter of course, in view of the fact that he was so much older than they and vastly their superior in military knowledge.

"Dick," continued the sergeant, "what was it you was sayin' about a cousin of yours from the same town in Kentucky bein' out there in the Southern army?"

"He's certainly there," replied Dick, "if he wasn't killed in the battle, which I feel couldn't have happened to a fellow like Harry. We're from the same little