He and Grant stood
together on a hill looking toward the future field of conflict, and he
told Grant now that he expected continued success.
It was the fortune of the young officers of the Winchester regiment
sitting near on their horses to see the two generals who were in such
earnest consultation, and who examined the whole circle of the country
so long and so carefully through powerful glasses.
The effects of the victory deep in the South were growing hourly in
Dick's mind, and the two figures standing there on the hill were full of
significance to him. He had a premonition that they were the men more
than any others who would achieve the success of the Union, if it were
achieved at all. They had dismounted and stood side by side, the figure
of Grant short, thick and sturdy, that of Sherman, taller and more
slender. They spoke only at intervals, and few words then, but nothing
in the country about them escaped their attention.
Dick had glasses of his own, and he, too, began to look. He saw a region
much wooded and cut by deep streams. Before them lay the sluggish waters
of Chickasaw Bayou, where Sherman had sustained a severe defeat at an
earlier time, and farther away flowed the deep, muddy Yazoo.
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