"I like these hills and forests and their clear waters," said Dick, "and judging by the appearance it must be a fine country to which we're coming."
"It is. It's something like your Kentucky Blue Grass, although it's smaller and it's hemmed in by sharper and bolder mountains. But I should say that the Shenandoah Valley is close to a hundred and twenty miles long, and from twenty-five to forty miles wide, not including its spur, the Luray Valley, west of the Massanuttons."
"As large as one of the German Principalities."
"And as fine as any of them."
"It's where Stonewall Jackson made that first and famous campaign of his."
"And it's lucky for us that we don't have to face him there now. Early is a good general, they say, but he's no Stonewall Jackson."
"And we're to be led by Sheridan. I think he saved us at Perryville in Kentucky, but they say he's become a great cavalry commander. Do you know him, Mr. Shepard?"
"Well. A young man, and a little man. Why, you'd overtop him more than half a head, Mr. Mason, but he has a great soul for battle. He's the kind that will strike and strike, and keep on striking, and that's the kind we need now."
"Here are our own men just ahead. I see the three colonels riding together."
They went forward swiftly and told what they had seen, Shepard also describing the nature of the ground ahead, and the manner in which the two roads converged.