Why get excited when you know the end before it begins."
"You know it?"
"Yes."
"Victory?"
He laughed cynically:
"Victory for a pompous braggart who could write that address to an army
reflecting on the men who fought Lee and Jackson before Richmond with
such desperate courage?"
"You are sure of defeat then?"
"Absolutely."
Betty looked at him with a flush of angry excitement:
"General McClellan is counting on Pope's defeat to-day?"
"Yes."
"Then it's true that he is not really trying to help him?"
"Why should he wish to sacrifice his brave men under the leadership of a
fool?"
"He is, in fact, defying the orders of the President, isn't he?"
"You might say that if you strain a point," John admitted.
Again the long roar of guns boomed on the Western horizon, louder,
clearer. The dull echoes became continuous now, and the quickening
breeze brought the faint din from the vast field of death whose blazing
smoke covered lines stretched over seven miles.
"_Boom-boom-boom, boom!--boom! boom!_"
Again they drew rein and listened.
John's brow wrinkled and his right ear was thrown slightly forward.
"Those are our big guns," he said with a smile. "The Confederate
artillery can't compare with ours--their infantry is a terror--stark,
dead game fighters----"
"_Boom--Boom!----Boom! Boom! Boom!_"
"How do you know those are our guns?" Betty asked with a shiver.
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