A far-off look stole into his eyes.
"It will be a good one though when it comes, I reckon."
"There can be no good one—if my boy's in it."
"Well, I'll be in it!"
"Yes. I know."
She kissed him and turned back into the house, with the old fear gripping her heart.
CHAPTER XL
The early months of the war were but skirmishes. The real work of killing and maiming the flower of the race had not begun.
The defeat had given the sad-eyed President unlimited power to draw on the resources of the nation for men and money. His call for half a million soldiers met with instant response. The fighting spirit of twenty-two million Northern people had been roused. They felt the disgrace of Bull Run and determined to wipe it out in blood.
Three Northern armies were hurled on the South in a well-planned, concerted movement to take Richmond. McDowell marched straight down to Fredericksburg with forty thousand. Fermont, with Milroy, Banks and Shields, was sweeping through the Shenandoah Valley. McClellan, with his grand army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, had moved up the Peninsula in resistless force until he lay on the banks of the Chickahominy within sight of the spires of Richmond.