The boy watched the leader who rode almost by his side. Jackson had put on his own cavalry cloak, but it was fastened by a single button at the top and it had blown open. He did not seem to notice the fact. Apparently he was oblivious of heat and cold alike, and rode on, bent a little forward in the saddle, his face the usual impenetrable mask. But Harry knew that the brain behind that brow never ceased to work, always thinking and planning, trying this combination and that, ready to make any sacrifice to do the work that was to be done.

The long shadows came, and the short day that had turned so cold was over, giving way to the night that was colder than the day. They were on the hills now and even the vigorous Jackson felt that it was time to stop until morning. The night had turned very dark, a fierce wind was blowing, and now and then a fine sift of snow as sharp as hail was blown against their faces.

The wagons with the heavy clothing, blankets and food had not come up, and perhaps would not arrive until the next day. Gloom as dark as the night itself began to spread among the young troops, but Jackson gave them little time for bemoaning their fate. Fires were quickly built from fallen wood. The men found warmth and a certain mental relief in gathering the wood itself. The officers, many of them boys themselves, shared in the work. They roamed through the forest dragging in fallen timber, and now and then, an old rail fence was taken panel by panel to join the general heap.

The fires presently began to crackle in the darkness, running in long, irregular lines, and the young soldiers crowded in groups about them. At the same time they ate the scanty rations they carried in their knapsacks, and wondered what had become of the wagons. Jackson sent detachments to seek his supply trains, but Harry knew that he would not wait for it in the morning. The horses drawing the heavy loads over the slippery roads would need rest as badly as the men, and Jackson would go on. If food was not there—well then his troops must march on empty stomachs.

Youth changes swiftly and the high spirits with which the soldiers had departed in the morning were gone. The night had become extremely cold. Fierce winds whistled down from the crests of the mountains and pierced their clothing with myriads of little icy darts. They crept closer and closer to the fire. Their faces burned while their backs froze, and the menacing wind, while it chilled them to the marrow with its breath, seemed to laugh at them in sinister fashion. They thought with many a lament of their warm quarters in Winchester.

Harry shared the common depression to a certain extent. He had recalled that morning how the young Napoleon started on his great campaign of Italy, and there had been in his mind some idea that it would be repeated in the Virginia valleys, but he recalled at night that the soldiers of the youthful Bonaparte had marched and fought in warm days in a sunny country. It was a different thing to conduct a great campaign, when the clouds heavy with snow were hovering around the mountain tops, and the mercury was hunting zero. He shivered and looked apprehensively into the chilly night. His apprehension was not for a human foe, but for the unbroken spirits of darkness and mystery that can cow us all.

No tents were pitched. Jackson shared the common lot, sitting by a fire with some of the higher officers, while three or four other young aides were near. The sifts of snow turned after a while into a fine but steady snow, which continued half an hour. The backs of the soldiers were covered with white, while their faces burned. Then there was a shuffling sound at every fire, as the men turned their backs to the blaze and their faces to the forest.

Harry watched General Jackson closely. He was sitting on a fallen log, which the soldiers had drawn near to one of the largest fires, and he was staring intently into the coals. He did not speak, nor did he seem to take any notice of those about him. Harry knew, too, that he was not seeing the coals, but the armies of the enemy on the other side of the cold mountain.

Jackson after a while beckoned to the young aides and he gave to every one in turn the same command.

“Mount and make a complete circuit of the army. Report to me whether all the pickets are watchful, and whether any signs of the enemy can be seen.”

Harry had tethered his horse in a little grove near by, where he might be sheltered as much as possible from the cold, and the faithful animal which had not tasted food that day, whimpered and rubbed his nose against his shoulder when he came.

“I’m sorry, old boy,” whispered Harry, “I’d give you food if I could, but since I can’t give you food I’ve got to give you more work.”

He put on the bridle, leaped into the saddle, which had been left on the horse’s back, and rode away on his mission. The password that night was “Manassas,” and Harry exchanged it with the pickets who curved in a great circle through the lone, cold forest. They were always glad to see him. They were alone, save when two of them met at the common end of a beat, and these youths of the South were friendly, liking to talk and to hear the news of others.

Toward the Northern segment of the circle he came to a young giant from the hills who was walking back and forth with the utmost vigor and shaking himself as if he would throw off the cold. His brown face brightened with pleasure when he saw Harry and exchanged the password.

“Two or three other officers have been by here ridin’ hosses,” he said in the voice of an equal speaking to his equal, “an’ they don’t fill me plum’ full o’ envy a-tall, a-tall. I guess a feller tonight kin keep warmer walkin’ on the ground than ridin’ on a hoss. What might your name be, Mr. Officer?”

“Kenton. I’m a lieutenant, at present on the staff of General Jackson. What is yours?”

“Seth Moore, an’ I’m always a private, but at present doin’ sentinel duty, but wishin’ I was at home in our double log house ‘tween the blankets.”

“Have you noticed anything, Seth?” asked Harry, not at all offended by the nature of his reply.

“I’ve seen some snow, an’ now an’ then the cold top of a mountain, an’—”

“An’ what, Seth?”

“Do you see that grove straight toward the north four or five hundred yards away?”

“Yes, but I can make nothing of it but a black blur. It’s too far away to tell the trunks of the trees apart.”

“It’s too fur fur me, too, an’ my eyes are good, but ten or fifteen minutes ago, leftenant, I thought I saw a shadder at the edge of the grove. It ‘peared to me that the shadder was like that of a horse with a man on it. After a while it went back among the trees an’ o’ course I lost it thar.”

“You feel quite sure you saw the shadow, Seth?”

“Yes, leftenant. I’m shore I ain’t mistook. I’ve hunted ‘coons an’ ‘possums at night too much to be mistook about shadders. I reckon, if I may say so, shadders is my specialty, me bein’ somethin’ o’ a night owl. As shore as I’m standin’ here, leftenant, and as shore as you’re settin’ there on your hoss, a mounted man come to the edge of that wood an’ stayed thar a while, watchin’ us. I’d have follered him, but I couldn’t leave my beat here, an’ you’re the first officer I’ve saw since. It may amount to nothin, an’ then again it mayn’t.”

“I’m glad you told me. I’ll go into the grove myself and see if anybody is there now.”

“Leftenant, if I was you I’d be mighty keerful. If it’s a spy it’ll be easy enough for him under the cover of the trees to shoot you in the open comin’ toward him.”

Harry knew that Jackson planned a surprise of some kind and Seth Moore’s words about the mounted man alarmed him. He did not doubt the accuracy of the young mountaineer’s eyesight, or his coolness, and he resolved that he would not go back to headquarters until he knew more about that “shadow.” But Moore’s advice about caution was not to be unheeded.

“If you keep in the edge of our woods here,” said Moore, “an’ ride along a piece you’ll come to a little valley. Then you kin go up that an’ come into the grove over thar without being seed.”

“Good advice. I’ll take it.”

Harry loosened one of the pistols in his belt and rode cautiously through the wood as Seth Moore had suggested. The ground sloped rapidly, and soon he reached the narrow but deep little valley with a dense growth of trees and underbrush on either side. The valley led upward, and he came into the grove just as Moore had predicted.

This forest was of much wider extent than he had supposed. It stretched northward further than he could see, and, although it was devoid of undergrowth, it was very dark among the trees. He rode his horse behind the trunk of a great oak, and, pausing there, examined all the forest within eyeshot.

He saw nothing but the long rows of tree trunks, white on the northern side with snow, and he heard nothing but the cold rustle of wind among boughs bare of branches. Yet he had full confidence in the words of Seth Moore. He could neither see him nor hear him, but he was sure that somebody besides himself was in the wood. Once more the soul and spirit of his great ancestor were poured into him, and for the moment he, too, was the wilderness rover, endowed with nerves preternaturally acute.

Hidden by the great tree trunks he listened attentively. His horse, oppressed by the cold and perhaps by the weariness of the day, was motionless and made no sound. He waited two or three minutes and then he was sure that he heard a slight noise, which he believed was made by the hoofs of a horse walking very slowly. Then he saw the shadow.

It was the dim figure of a man on horseback, moving very cautiously at some distance from Harry. He urged his own horse forward a little, and the shadow stopped instantly. Then he knew that he had been seen, and he sat motionless in the saddle for an instant or two, not knowing what to do.

After all, the man on horseback might be a friend. He might be some scout from a band of rangers, coming to join Jackson; and not yet sure that the army in the woods was his. Recovering from his indecision he rode forward a little and called:

“Who are you?”

The shadow made no reply, and horse and rider were motionless. They seemed for an instant to be phantoms, but then Harry knew that they were real. He was oppressed by a feeling of the weird and menacing. He would make the sinister figure move and his hand dropped toward his pistol belt.

“Stop, I can fire before you!” cried the figure sharply, and then Harry suddenly saw a pistol barrel gleaming across the stranger’s saddle bow.

Harry checked his hand, but he did not consider himself beaten by any means. He merely waited, wary and ready to seize his opportunity.

“I don’t want to shoot,” said the man in a clear voice, “and I won’t unless you make me. I’m no friend. I’m an enemy, that is, an official enemy, and I think it strange, Harry Kenton, almost the hand of fate, that you and I come face to face again under such circumstances.”

Harry stared, and then the light broke. Now he remembered both the voice and the figure.

“Shepard!” he exclaimed.

“It’s so. We’re engaged upon the same duty. I’ve just been inspecting the army of General Jackson, calculating its numbers, its equipment, and what it may do. Keep your hand away from that pistol. I might not hit you, but the chances are that I would. But as I said, I don’t want to shoot. It wouldn’t help our cause or me any to maim or kill you. Suppose we call it peace between us for this evening.”

“I agree to call it peace because I have to do it.”

Shepard laughed, and his laugh was not at all sarcastic or unpleasant.

“Why a rage to kill?” he said. “You and I, Harry Kenton, will find before this war is over that we’ll get quite enough of fighting in battles without seeking to make slaughter in between. Besides, having met you several times, I’ve a friendly feeling for you. Now turn and ride back to your own lines and I’ll go the other way.”

The blood sprang into Harry’s face and his heart beat hard. There was something dominating and powerful in the voice. It now had the tone of a man who spoke to one over whom he ruled. Yet he could do nothing. He saw that Shepard was alert and watchful. He felt instinctively that his foe would fire if he were forced to do so and that he would not miss. Then despite himself, he felt admiration for the man’s skill and power, and a pronounced intellectual quality that he discovered in him.

“Very well,” he replied, “I’ll turn and go back, but I want to tell you, Mr. Shepard, that while you have been estimating what General Jackson’s army can do you must make that estimate high.”

“I’ve already done so,” called Shepard—Harry was riding away as he spoke. The boy at the edge of the wood looked back, but the shadow was already gone. He rode straight across the open and Seth Moore met him.

“Did you find anything?” the young mountaineer asked.

“Yes, there was a mounted man in a blue uniform, a spy, who has been watching, but he made off. You had good eyes, Seth, and I’m going to report this at once to General Jackson.”

Harry knew that he was the bearer of an unpleasant message. General Jackson was relying upon surprise, and it would not please him to know that his movements were watched by an active and intelligent scout or spy. But the man had already shown his greatness by always insisting upon hearing the worst of everything.

He found the chief, still sitting before one of the fires and reported to him fully. Jackson listened without comment, but at the end he said to two of the brigadiers who were sitting with him:

“We march again at earliest dawn. We will not wait for the wagons.”

Then he added to Harry:

“You’ve done good service. Join the sleepers, there.”

He pointed to a group of young officers rolled in their blankets, and Harry obeyed quickly.