Kenton carefully closed and fastened the window and door again
and the two mounted their horses, which they led into the road.

"Dick," said the colonel, "you and I are on opposing sides, but we can
never be enemies."

Then, after a strong handclasp, they rode away by different roads, each
riding with a lighter heart.

CHAPTER XII. THROUGH THE BLUEGRASS

Dick's horse had had a good rest, and he was fighting for his head
before they were clear of the outskirts of Pendleton. When the road
emerged once more into the deep woods the boy gave him the rein. It was
well past midnight now, and he wished to reach the army before dawn.

Soon the great horse was galloping, and Dick felt exhilaration as the
cool air of early October rushed past. The heat in both east and west
had been so long and intense, that year, that the coming of autumn was
full of tonic. Yet the uncommon dryness, the least rainy summer and
autumn in two generations, still prevailed. The hoofs of Dick's horse
left a cloud of dust behind him. The leaves of the trees were falling
already, rustling dryly as they fell. Brooks that were old friends of
his and that he had never known to go dry before were merely chains of
yellow pools in a shallow bed.

He watered his horse at one or two of the creeks that still flowed in
good volume, and then went on again, sometimes at a gallop. He passed
but one horseman, a farmer who evidently had taken an unusually early
start for a mill, as a sack of corn lay across his saddle behind him.
Dick nodded but the farmer stared open-mouthed at the youth in the blue
uniform who flew past him.

Dick never looked back and by dawn he was with the army. He found
Colonel Winchester taking breakfast under the thin shade of an oak, and
joined him.

"What did you find, Dick?" asked the colonel, striving to hide the note
of anxiety in his voice.

"I found all right at the house, but I did not see mother."

"What had become of her?"

"I learned from a friend that in order to be out of the path of the army
or of prowling bands she had gone to relatives of ours in Danville. Then
I came away."

"She did well," said Colonel Winchester. "The rebels are concentrating
about Lexington, but the battle, I think, will take place far south of
that city."

Before the day was old they heard news that changed their opinion
for the time at least. A scout brought news that a division of the
Confederate army was much nearer than Lexingt