But fires were soon lighted along their whole front, and provisions were brought up from the rear and from the steamers.  The soldiers, feeling their strength returning, ate ravenously.  They also talked much of the battle.  Many of them were yet under the influence of hysterical excitement.  They told extraordinary stories of the things they had seen and done, and they believed all they told were true.  They ate fiercely, at first almost like wolves, but after a while they resolved into their true state as amiable young human beings and were ashamed of themselves.

All the while Buell’s army of the Ohio was passing over the river and joining Grant’s army of the Tennessee.  Regiment after regiment and brigade after brigade crossed.  The guns that Nelson had been forced to leave behind were also brought up and were taken over with the other batteries.  While the shattered remnants of the army of the Tennessee were resting, the fresh army of the Ohio was marching by it in the late hours of the night in order to face the Southern foe in the morning.

The Southern army itself lay deep in the woods from which it had driven its enemy.  Always the assailant through the day, its losses had been immense.  Many thousands had fallen, and no new troops were coming to take their place.  Continual reinforcements came to the North throughout the night, not a soldier came to the South.  Beauregard, at dawn, would have to face twice his numbers, at least half of whom were fresh troops.

Another conference was held by the Southern generals in the forest, but now the central figure, the great Johnston, was gone.  The others, however, summoned their courage anew, and passed the whole night arranging their forces, cheering the men, and preparing for the morn.  Their scouts and skirmishers kept watch on the Northern camp, and the Southerners believed that while they had whipped only one army the day before, they could whip two on the morrow.

Dick and his friends meanwhile were lying on the earth, resting, but not able to sleep.  The nerves, drawn so tightly by the day’s work, were not yet relaxed wholly.  A deep apathy seized them all.  Dick, from a high point on which he lay, saw the dark surface of the Tennessee, and the lights on the puffing steamers as they crossed, bearing the Army of the Ohio.  His mind did not work actively now, but he felt that they were saved.  The deep river, although it was on their flank, seemed to flow as a barrier against the foe, and it was, in fact, a barrier more and more, as without its command the second Union army could never have come to the relief of the first.

Dick, after a while, saw Colonel Winchester, and other officers near him.  They were talking of their losses.  They gave the names of many generals and colonels who had been killed.  Presently they moved away, and he fell into an uneasy sleep, or rather doze, from which he was awakened after a while by a heavy rumbling sound of a distant cannonade.