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 town in Kentucky, Pendleton.  He’s descended straight from one of the greatest Indian fighters, borderers and heroes the country down there ever knew, Henry Ware, who afterwards became one of the early governors of the State.  And I’m descended from Henry Ware’s famous friend, Paul Cotter, who, in his time, was the greatest scholar in all the West.  Henry Ware and Paul Cotter were like the old Greek friends, Damon and Pythias.  Harry and I are proud to have their blood in our veins.  Besides being cousins, there are other things to make Harry and me think a lot of each other.  Oh, he’s a grand fellow, even if he is on the wrong side!”

Dick’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm as he spoke of the cousin and comrade of his childhood.