rsuit in this great
war, and a most engrossing and dangerous task I find it. Yet, I would
not leave it. My name is Shepard, and I am a spy. You needn't shrink.
I'm not ashamed of my occupation. Why should I be? I don't kill. I don't
commit any violence. I'm a guide and educator. I and my kind are the
eyes of an army. We show the generals where the enemy is, and we
tell them his plans. An able and daring spy is worth more than many
a general. Besides, he takes the risk of execution, and he can win no
glory, for he must always remain obscure, if not wholly unknown. Which,
then, makes the greater sacrifice for his country, the spy or the
general?"

"You give me a new point of view. I had not thought before how spies
risked so much for so little reward."

Shepard smiled. He saw that in spite of his logic Dick yet retained
that slight feeling of aversion. The boy left him, when they arrived at
headquarters, but the news that Shepard brought was soon known to the
whole army.

Jackson had left his camp. He was gone again, disappeared into the
ether. "Retreated" was the word that Pope at once seized upon, and he
sent forth happy bulletins. Shepard and other scouts and spies reported
a day or two later that Jackson's army was on the Rapidan, one of the
numerous Virginia rivers. Then Dick accompanied Colonel Winchester, who
was sent by rail to Washington with dispatches.

He did not find in the capital the optimism that reigned in the mind of
Pope. McClellan was withdrawing his army from Virginia, but the eyes of
the nation were turned toward Pope. Many who had taken deep thought of
the times and of men, were more alarmed about Pope than he was about
himself. They did not like those jubilant dispatches from "Headquarters
in the Saddle." There was ominous news that Lee himself was marching
north, and that he and Jackson would soon be together. Anxious eyes
scanned the hills about Washington. The enemy had been very near once
before, and he might soon be near again.

Dick had an hour of leisure, and he wandered into an old hotel, at which
many great men had lived. They would point to Henry Clay's famous chair
in the lobby, and the whole place was thick with memories of Webster,
Calhoun and others who had seemed almost demigods to their own
generation.

But a different crowd was there now. They were mostly paunchy men who
talked of contracts and profits. One, to whom the others paid deference,
was fat, heavy and of middle ag