wild. Only the waste, the sinful waste! I can't go back and face Merry
without trying something--anything! Can't you ... Drew?"

"I don't know." He couldn't harden himself to tell her the truth. "I'll
try," he promised vaguely.

"Drew--" A change in tone brought his attention back to her. She looked
disturbed, almost embarrassed. "Have you had a hard time? You look
so ... so thin and tired. Is there anything you need?"

He flinched from any such attack on the shell he had built against the
intrusion of Red Springs, for a second or two feeling once more the rasp
across raw nerves. "We don't get much time for sleep when the General's
on the prod. Horse stealin' and such keeps us a mite busy, accordin' to
your Yankee friends. And we have to pay our respects to them, just to
keep them reminded that this is Morgan country. I'll warn you again,
Aunt Marianna, keep Lady Jane out of Lexington today--if you want to
keep _her_." He gathered up his reins. "Boyd told me about Grandfather,"
he added in a rush. "I'm sorry." And he was, he told himself, sorry for
Aunt Marianna, who had to stay at Red Springs now, and even a little in
an impersonal way for the old man, who must find inactivity a worse
prison than any stone-walled room. But it was being polite about a
stranger. "Major Forbes ... he's all right?"

"Yes. Only, Drew--" Again the urgency in her voice held him against his
will, "Boyd...."

He was saved further evasion by a carrying whistle from down the road,
the signal to pull in pickets. Pursing his own lips, he answered.

"I have to go. I'll do what I can." He set Shawnee pounding along the
pike, and he did not look back.

If he were ever to fulfill his promise to locate Boyd, that would have
to come later. Quirk's horse catch delivered, the scouts were on the
move again, on the Georgetown road, riding at a pace which suggested
they must keep ahead of a boiling wasp's nest of Yankees. There was an
embarrassment of blue-coat prisoners on the march between two lines of
gray uniforms, and pockets of the enemy such as that at Fort Clay were
left behind. The strike northward took on a feverish drive.

Georgetown with its streets full of women and cheering males, too old or
too young to be riding with the columns. Mid-afternoon, Friday, and the
heat rising from the pavement as only June heat could. Then they reached
the Frankfort road, and the main command halted. The scouts ate in the
saddle as they fanned out along