"Not much—none at all!" replied Leslie. "But see how long this one regiment has been in filing past. Only one regiment—not much more than a thousand men, and yet the street seems full of the glisten of their bayonets for half-a-mile. We have grown used to handling the phrases 'thirty thousand,' 'fifty thousand,' 'one hundred thousand,' or even 'a quarter of a million' of men, just as glibly as we speak of one, two or ten millions of money; and yet we realize very little of the force of those numbers. Fifty thousand men are considered to be no army—nothing more than a skirmishing party, now-a-days; and yet to form it, forty or fifty such bodies of men as that which has just passed us must be included. Is it any wonder—after studying a thousand men in this manner—that while we have many generals capable of managing five or ten thousand, very few can command fifty thousand without making a mess of it, and a hundred thousand succeeds in crazing almost every one of our commanders?"
"Wonder? No, I should think not," said Harding, laughing. "I have puzzle enough, sometimes, with even that number of figures, and I should make a bad muddle of handling that quantity of men. But, by the way, did you ever read that singular novel, 'Border War,' by a South-western writer, Jones, published several years ago?"
"I have skimmed it—never read it," said Leslie. "Remarkable book, I should say, to be read over now-a-days, when the event then handled as romance has become reality!"
"The numbers of his opposing forces, as compared with the actual armies of the present day, are the great point of interest," said Harding. "He makes terrible blunders in guessing at the great battle-ground of the war, as he lays the principal battles in Upper Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and does not seem to contemplate the possibility of there being any fighting on Southern soil. But his numbers—I think he made each of the opposing forces number some one hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand men; and a sharp reviewer broke out into a loud guffaw over the impossibility that any such number of men could ever be arrayed against each other, on the soil of the United States, by any possible convulsion. Only a few years have passed, and we have three or four times his numbers in the fight on either side, with half a million more men to be called for."
"We are travelling fast—that is all," replied Leslie.
"You couldn't exactly inform me where, could you?" asked Harding. "But,—phew!—w!—w!" looking at his watch, "the soldiers are gone and time is up; I must look after my deposits before three."
"And what are we to do about our mystery?" asked Leslie, as the other was about to leave him. "Give that up altogether?—or will you agree to take a hand in at personal investigation?"
"Yes—no—I really do not know what to say, Tom!" was the reply of Harding. "At all events, I have spent all the time I can spare to-day, looking after that and the soldiers. 'Business first and pleasure afterwards,' you know."
"Yes," said Leslie, "as the excellent Duke of Gloster remarked, when he first killed the old King and then murdered the young Princes."
"Pshaw!" replied Harding, "I think I may have heard that before."