But optimism continued to reign in the Union army.  Buell would arrive soon with his division and then seventy thousand strong they would resume their march southward, crushing everything.  Meanwhile it was pleasant while they waited.  They had an abundance of food.  They were well sheltered from the rains.  The cold days were passing, nature was bursting into its spring bloom, and the crisp fresh winds that blew from the west and south were full of life and strength.  It was a joy merely to breathe.

One rainy day the three boys, who had met by chance, went into the little church for shelter from a sudden spring rain.  From the shutterless window Dick saw Sergeant Whitley scurrying in search of a refuge, and they called to him.  He came gladly and took a seat in one of the rough wooden pews of the little church of Shiloh.  The three boys had the greatest respect for the character and judgment of the sergeant, and Dick asked him when he thought the army would march.

“They don’t tell these things to sergeants,” said Whitley.

“But you see and you know a lot about war.”

“Well, you’ve noticed that the army ain’t gettin’ ready to march.  When General Buell gets here we’ll have nigh onto seventy thousand men, and seventy thousand men can’t lift themselves up by their bootstraps an’ leave, all in a mornin’.”

“But we don’t have to hurry,” said Pennington.  “There’s no Southern army west of the Alleghanies that could stand before our seventy thousand men for an hour.”

“General Buell ain’t here yet.”

“But he’s coming.”

“But he ain’t here yet,” persisted the sergeant, “an’ he can’t be here for several days, ’cause the roads are mighty deep in the spring mud.  Don’t say any man is here until he is here.  An’ I tell you that General Johnston, with whom we’ve got to deal, is a great man.  I wasn’t with him when he made that great march through the blizzards an’ across the plains to Salt Lake City to make the Mormons behave, but I’ve served with them that was.  An’ I’ve never yet found one of them who didn’t say General Johnston was a mighty big man.  Soldiers know when the right kind of a man is holdin’ the reins an’ drivin’ ’em.  Didn’t we all feel that we was bein’ driv right when General Grant took hold?”

“We all felt it,” said the three in chorus.

“Of course you did,” said the sergeant, “an’ now I’ve got a kind of uneasy feelin’ over General Johnston.  Why don’t we hear somethin’ from him?  Why don’t we know what he’s doin’?  We haven’t sent out any scoutin’ parties.  On the plains, no matter how strong we was, we was always on the lookout for hostile Indians, while here we know there is a big Confederate army somewhere within fifty miles of us, but don’t take the trouble to look it up.”

“That’s so,” said Warner.  “Caution represents less than five per cent of our effectiveness.  But I suppose we can whip the Johnnies anyway.”