Their advance, as at Champion Hill, was over ground wooded heavily and they soon heard the reports of the rifles before them. Bullets began to cut the leaves and twigs, carrying away the bushes, scarring the trees and now and then taking human life. The Winchester men fired whenever they saw an enemy, and with them it was largely an affair of sharpshooters, but on both left and right the battle rolled more heavily. The Southerners, behind their powerful fortifications at the heads of the ravines and on the plateau, beat back every attack.
Before long the trumpets sounded the recall and the short battle ceased. Grant had discovered that he could not carry Vicksburg by a sudden rush and he recoiled for a greater effort. He discovered, too, from the resistance and the news brought later by his scouts that an army almost as numerous as his own was in the town.
The Winchester regiment made camp on a solid, dry piece of ground beyond the range of the Southern works, and the men, veterans now, prepared for their comfort. The comrades ate supper to the slow booming of great guns, where the advanced cannon of either side engaged in desultory duel.
The distant reports did not disturb Dick. They were rather soothing. He was glad enough to rest after so much exertion and so much danger and excitement.
“I feel as if I were an empty shell,” he said, “and I’ve got to wait until nature comes along and fills up the shell again with a human being.”
“In my school in Vermont,” said Warner, “they’d call that a considerable abuse of metaphor, but all metaphors are fair in war. Besides, it’s just the way I feel, too. Do you think, Dick, we’ll settle down to a regular siege?”
“Knowing General Grant as we do, not from what he tells us, since he hasn’t taken Pennington and you and me into his confidence as he ought to, but from our observation of his works, I should say that he would soon attack again in full force.”
“I agree with you, Knight of the Penetrating Mind, but meanwhile I’m going to enjoy myself.”
“What do you mean, George?”
“A mail has come through by means of the river, and my good father and mother-God bless ’em-have sent me what they knew I would value most, something which is at once an intellectual exercise, an entertainment, and a consolation in bereavement.”
Dick and Pennington sat up. Warner’s words were earnest and portentous. Besides, they were very long, which indicated that he was not jesting.
“Go ahead, George. Show us what it is!” said Dick eagerly.
Warner drew from the inside pocket of his waist coat a worn volume which he handled lovingly.
“This,” he said, “is the algebra, with which I won the highest honors in our academy. I have missed it many and many a time since I came into this war. It is filled with the most beautiful problems, Dick, questions which will take many a good man a whole night to solve. When I think of the joyous hours I’ve spent over it some of the tenderest chords in my nature are touched.”
Pennington uttered a deep groan and buried his face in the grass. Then he raised it again and said mournfully:
“Let’s make a solemn agreement, Dick, to watch over our poor comrade. I always knew that something was wrong with his mind, although he means well, and his heart is in the right place. As for me, as soon as I finished my algebra I sold it, and took a solemn oath never to look inside one again. That I call the finest proof of sanity anybody could give. Oh, look at him, Dick! He’s studying his blessed algebra and doesn’t hear a word I say!”
Warner was buried deep in the pages of a plus b and x minus y, and Dick and Pennington, rising solemnly, walked noiselessly from the presence around to the other side of the little opening where they lay down again. The bit of nonsense relieved them, but it was far from being nonsense to Warner. His soul was alight. As he dived into the intricate problems memories came with them. Lying there in the Southern thickets in the close damp heat of summer he saw again his Vermont mountains with their slopes deep in green and their crests covered with snow. The sharp air of the northern winter blew down upon him, and he saw the clear waters of the little rivers, cold as ice, foaming over the stones. That air was sharp and vital, but, after a while, he came back to himself and closed his book with a sigh.