Dick did not rejoice now in the work they were doing, although he saw its need.  Theirs was a task of destruction.  For a distance of more than fifty miles they ruined a canal important to the Confederacy.  Boats, locks, everything went, and they also made cuts by which the swollen James poured into the canal, flooding it and thrusting it out of its banks.  They met no resistance save a few distant shots, and Sheridan rejoiced over his plan to join the Army of the Potomac, although he had not yet been able to send word of it to Grant.

But the omens remained propitious.  They saw now that there were no walls in the rear of the Confederacy and they had little to do but march.  The heavy rains followed them, roads disappeared, and it seemed to the young captains that they lived in eternal showers of mud.  Horses and riders alike were caked with it, and they ceased to make any effort to clean themselves.

“This is not a white army,” said Warner, looking down a long column, “it’s brown, although it would be hard to name the shade of brown.”

“It’s not always brown,” said Pennington.  “Lots of the Virginia mud is a rich, ripe red.  Bet you anything that before tomorrow night we will have turned to some hue of scarlet.”

“We won’t take the wager,” said Dick, “because you bet on a certainty.”

That afternoon the scouts surprised a telegraph station on the railroad, and found in it a dispatch from General Early.  To the great amazement of Sheridan, Early was not far away.  He had only two hundred men, but with them the grim old fighter prepared to attack the Union army.  Sheridan himself felt a certain pity for his desperate opponent, but he promptly sent Custer in search of him.  The young cavalryman quickly found him and scattered or captured the entire band.

Early escaped from the fight with a lone orderly as his comrade, and the next day the general who had lost all through no fault of his own, rode into Richmond with his single companion, and from him Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, heard the full tale of Southern disaster in the Valley of Virginia.

Meanwhile Sheridan and his victorious army rode on to a place called White House, where they found plenty of stores, and where they halted for a long rest, and also to secure new mounts, if they could.  Their horses were worn out completely by the great campaign and were wholly unfit for further service.  But it was hard to obtain fresh ones and the delay was longer than the general had intended.  Nevertheless his troops profited by it.  They had not realized until they stopped how near they too had come to utter exhaustion, and for several days they were in a kind of physical torpor while their strength came back gradually.

“I think I’ve removed the last trace of the Virginia mud from my clothes and myself,” said Warner on the morning of the second day, “but I’ve had to work hard to do it, as time seemed to have made it almost a part of my being.”