our face suddenly became melancholy--the moonlight is good,
enabling me to read your look--and sadness is not your natural
expression. You recall that your cousin, of whom you think so much,
is at hand with your enemies, and the rest is an easy matter of putting
two and two together."

"You're right in all you say, Mr. Shepard, but I wish Harry wasn't there."

Shepard was silent and then Dick added passionately:

"Why doesn't the South give up? She's worn down by attrition. She's
blockaded hard and fast! When she loses troops in battle she can't find
new men to take their places! She's short in food, ammunition, medicines,
everything! The whole Confederacy can't be anything but a shell now!
Why don't they quit!"

"Pride, and a lingering hope that the unexpected will happen. Yes,
we've won the war, Mr. Mason, but it's yet far from finished. Many a
good man will fall in this campaign ahead of us in the valley, and in
other campaigns too, but, as I see it, the general result is already
decided. Nothing can change it. Look between these trees, and you can
see the Southern force now."

Dick from his horse gazed into a valley down which ran a good turnpike,
looking white in the moonlight. Upon this road rode the Southern force
in close ranks, but too far away, for any sound of their hoof beats to
come to the watchers. The moon which was uncommonly bright now colored
them all with silver, and Dick, with his imaginative mind, easily turned
them into a train of the knights of old, clad in glittering mail.
They created such a sense of illusion and distance, time as well as space,
that the peace of the moment was not disturbed. It was a spectacle out
of the past, rather than present war.

"You are familiar with the country, of course," said Dick.

"Yes," replied Shepard. "Our road, as you know, is now running parallel
with that on which the Southern force is traveling, with a broad ridge
between. But several miles farther on the ridge becomes narrower and the
roads merge. We're sure to have a fight there. Like you, I'm sorry your
cousin Harry Kenton is with them."

"It seems that you and he know a good deal of each other."

"Yes, circumstances have brought us into opposition again and again from
the beginning of the war, but the same circumstances have made me know
more about him than he does about me. Yet I mean that we shall be
friends when peace comes, and I don't think he'll oppose my wish."

"He w