They were nearly always hoping for rain there, and he had learned to smell it before it came.

He could smell it now in the same way here in Mississippi.
His opinion did not waver, when the clouds floated away for a while, disclosing a faint moon and a few stars.

They were now on the banks of a brook, flowing through the wood, and Colonel Winchester thought he saw a movement in the forest beyond it.

It was altogether likely that so skillful a leader as Joe Johnston would have out bodies of scouts, and he stopped, bidding his men to take cover.
Dick sat on his horse by the colonel's side under the thick boughs of a great tree, and studied the thickets before them.

He, too, had noticed a movement, and he was confident that the Southern sharpshooters were there.