General Grant is about to undertake a great enterprise, one that demands the concentration of his troops.

I want you, Warner, to go to General Sherman with this dispatch, and here is one for you, Pennington, to take to General Banks." He paused a moment and Dick asked: "Am I to be left out ?" Colonel Winchester smiled.
He liked this eagerness on the part of his boys, and yet there was sadness in his smile, too.

Young lieutenants who rode forth on errands often failed to come back.
"You're included, Dick," he said, "and I think that yours is the most perilous mission of them all.

Pennington, you and Warner can be making ready and I'll tell Dick what he's to do." The Vermonter and the Nebraskan hurried away and Colonel Winchester, taking Dick by the arm, walked with him beyond the circle of firelight.
"Dick," he said gently, "they asked me to choose the one in my command whom I thought most fit for this duty to be done, and I've selected you, although I'm sending you into a great peril." Dick flushed with pride at the trust.

Youth blinded him at present to its perils.
"Thank you, sir," he said simply.
"You will recall Major Hertford, who was with us in Kentucky before the Shiloh days ?" "I could not forget him, sir.