hen come to the bottom!" exclaimed Harry, as he dived forward like a
flash, seized Shepard by the ankles and headed for the bottom of the
river with him. The water gurgled in his eyes and ears and nose, but he
held on for many seconds, despite the man's desperate struggles. Then
he was forced to let go and rise.

As his head shot above the stream he saw another shooting up in the same
manner about fifteen feet away. Both were choked and gasping, but Harry
managed to say:

"I didn't intend for you to come up so soon."

"I suppose not, but perhaps you didn't pause to think that when you rose
I'd rise with you."

"Yes, that's true. It seems to me that matters grow complicated.
Can't you persuade yourself, Mr. Shepard, to go and leave me alone?
I really have no use for you here."

"I'd like to oblige you, Lieutenant Kenton, but I intend to see that you
don't reach General Lee."

"Still harping upon that? It seems to me that you're a stupidly stubborn
man. Don't you know that I'm going anyhow?"

Harry had never ceased to watch his eyes, and he saw there the signal of
a coming movement. Shepard dived suddenly for him, intending to repeat
his own trick, but the youth was like a fish in the water, and he darted
to the right. The man came up grasping nothing. Harry laughed. The
chagrin of Shepard compelled his amusement, although he liked the man.

"I wish you'd go away, Mr. Shepard," he said. "On land you could,
perhaps, overpower me, but in the water I think I'm your master. All
through my boyhood I devoted a great deal of my time to swimming.
Dr. Russell of the Pendleton Academy--but you never knew him--used to say
that if I would swim less and study more I could make greater pretensions
to scholarship."

Shepard, swimming rather easily, regarded him thoughtfully.

"While we talk to each other in this more or less polite manner,
Mr. Kenton," he said, "we must not forget that we're in deadly earnest.
I mean to take you, and our scouts mean to take every other messenger who
goes out from Colonel Sherburne's camp. You know, and I know, that if
the Army of Northern Virginia does not reach in a few days that camp,
where there is a ford in ordinary weather, it will be driven up against
the Potomac and we can accumulate such great forces against it that it
cannot possibly escape. Even at Sherburne's place its escape is more
than doubtful, if it has to linger long."

"Yes, I know these things quite well, Mr