My Lady of the North

ome confiscated grain, the two of us lay lazily back on a grassy knoll, well within the shadow of a r

might prove to be, was silently accepted as part of the service we owed the State. Reckless and hardened as I know Craig to have been, I have no doubt he reflected upon Lee and his kindly words and was touched and softened by their memory, as he lay there stretched at full leng

ten pike, until we caught sight of the black shadow of Colton Church in our front; then we swerved to the left, and still mo

r smart trot up the valley. The short grass under foot, crisp from the hot sun of the long afternoon, caused many a slip of the poorly shod hoofs, while the darkness had grown so close and dense about us that we could barely creep through it, with only faith and a doubtful memory as guides. Every

s to direction and distance was upon his memory, and even that could scarcely serve for much on such a night as this. I traced his passage upward as best I might, and pressed close after him, guided not so much by sight as by sound,-the occasional rolling of a loosened stone, the rustling of leaves as he touched a bush in passage, the faint

eel reasonably assured of just then was that behind any rock

it's like bein' inside a pocket, sir, an' I reckon as how it must be nigh onter ten year since I run loose in this yere country as a kid. Thet thar cut-off we took a while back has sort o' c

ound farther back and considerably to

"But if I recollect clear, it sure used ter run mighty close ter the east edge. I recko

of certainty that I felt

t there on foot. Sitting here isn't apt to mend matters, and we

to the hollow of his arm, and in another moment was lost to sight in the darkness. A snake could not have slipped away more

of my saddle, listening for the slightest sound out in that black void. My head burned and throbbed as with fever, and I felt that strange, unnatural stillness as though it had been a physical thing; surely others besides us were upon this hilltop! For I knew well-my every soldier instinct told me-that somewhere out in that impenetrable mystery were blazing the camp-fire

s to a feeling almost of terror as I sat there in utter loneliness. I glanced behind, hoping that there at least I might discover some object on which my gaze might settle, something that would relieve the intense nerve-strain of the black nothingness. I swept with staring eyes the half circle where I knew must lie the deep wide va

d, in a firm endeavor to cast aside the uncanny influences of the hour, recalled in swift panorama those three years of civil strife which had run their course since I, a slender, white-faced lad, had stolen forth into the moonlight from the portals of the old home, to ride away into the northward where the throbbing drums called me. In th

weary weeks in the low-roofed hospital at Richmond. It seemed hardly possible that I could be that same slender, untried lad who stole forth with quaking heart, fearful of the very shadows of the oaks about the old home. What centuries of experience lay between! The same boy, yet moulded now into a man; into the leader of a troop of fighting men, hardened to steel by service, trust

into my face. "We uns are not more nor a hundred yards ter the

characteristic of his class. With scarcely the scraping of a hoof on the

hispered, as he swung up into saddle, "an' th

ion does their main

his hea

s yere road lay a bit too close ter the edge of ther plateau ter ever be the main pike what the Feds marched over. I reckon from ther direction it runs that maybe it might b

nto the black vacancy

nlightened," I returned, urging my horse carefully forward. "But we shall have to take th

humor in the thought, but without other attempt to give

nt peril. That we were now well within the guarded lines of the enemy we were both assured, although where or how we had succeeded in penetrating the cordon of picket posts unobserved we could only conjecture. The darkness about us seemed intensified by the high, overhanging bank o