The very morning the great column started the weather rapidly turned warmer, and then a heavy rain began to fall.

The hard road upon which the forty thousand hoofs had beat their marching song turned to mud, and forty thousand hoofs made a new sound, as they sank deep in it, and were then pulled out again.
"If it keeps us from going fast," said the philosophical sergeant, "it'll keep them that we're goin' after from gettin' away.

We're as good mud horses as they are." "Do you think we'll go through to Staunton ?" asked Dick of Warner.
"I've heard that we will, and that we'll go on and take Lynchburg too.
Then we're to curve about and in North Carolina join Sherman who has smashed the Confederacy in the west." "I don't like the North Carolina part," said Dick.

"I hope we'll go to Grant and march with him on Richmond, because that's where the death blow will be dealt, if it's dealt at all." "And that it will be dealt we don't doubt, neither you, nor I nor any of us." "Yes, that's so." While mud and rain could impede the progress of the great column they could not stop it.

Neither could they dampen the spirits of the young troopers who rode knee to knee, and who looked forward to new victories.
Through the floods of rain the ten thousand, scouts and skirmishers on their flanks, swept southward, and they encountered no foe.