The chance came very soon.  A frightened horse, probably with the memory of the battle still lodged somewhere in his animal brain, broke his tether and came charging among the troops.  Whitley made one leap, seized him by the bit in his mighty grasp and hurled him back on his haunches, where he held him until fear was gone from him.

“It was partly strength and partly sleight of hand, a trick that I learned in the cavalry,” he said to Dick as they put on their shoes.  “I got tired of lumberin’ an’ I wandered out west, where I served three years on horseback in the regular army, fightin’ the Indians.  Good fighters they are, too.  Mighty hard to put your hand on ’em.  Now they’re there an’ now they ain’t.  Now you see ’em before you, an’ then they’re behind you aimin’ a tomahawk at your head.  They taught us a big lot that I guess we can use in this war.  Come on, Dick, I guess them banquet halls are spread, an’ I know we’re ready.”

Not much order was preserved in the beaten brigade, which had become separated from the rest of the retreating army, but the spirits of all were rising and that, so Sergeant Whitley told Dick, was better just now than technical discipline.  The Northern army had gone to Bull Run with ample supplies, and now they lacked for nothing.  They ate long and well, and drank great quantities of coffee.  Then they put out the fires and resumed the march toward Washington.

They stopped again an hour or two after midnight and slept until morning.  Dick lay on the bare ground under the boughs of a great oak tree.  It was a quarter of an hour before sleep came, because his nervous system had received a tremendous wrench that day.  He closed his eyes and the battle passed again before them.  He remembered, too, a lightning glimpse of a face, that of his cousin, Harry Kenton, seen but an instant and then gone.  He tried to decide whether it was fancy or reality, and, while he was trying, he fell asleep and slept as one dead.

Dick was awakened early in the morning by Sergeant Whitley, who was now watching over him like an elder brother.  The sun already rode high and there was a great stir and movement, as the brigade was forming for its continued retreat on the capital.  The boy’s body was at first stiff and sore, but the elasticity of youth returned fast, and after a brief breakfast he was fully restored.

Another hot day had dawned, but Dick reflected grimly that however hot it might be it could not be as hot as the day before had been.  Scouts in the night had brought back reports that the Southern troops were on the northern side of Bull Run, but not in great force, and a second battle was no longer feared.  The flight could be continued without interruption over the hot Virginia fields.

Much of Dick’s depression returned as they advanced under the blazing sun, but Whitley, who seemed insensible to either fatigue or gloom, soon cheered him up again.