Sherburne shook his head and the gravity of his face increased.  As the cloud grew alarm grew with it in his mind.

“Maybe it will pass,” said Harry hopefully.

“I don’t think so.  It’s not moving away.  It just hangs there and grows and grows.  You’re a woodsman, Harry, and you ought to feel it.  Don’t you think the atmosphere has changed?”

“I didn’t have the courage to say so until you asked me, but it’s damper.  If I were posing as a prophet I should say that we’re going to have rain.”

“And so should I. Usually at this period of the year in our country we want rain, but now we dread it like a pestilence.  At any other time the Potomac could rise or fall, whenever it pleased, for all I cared, but now it’s life and death.”

“Our doubts are decided and we’ve lost.  Look, sir the whole southwest is dark now!”

“And here come the first drops!”

Sherburne sent hurried orders among the men to keep their ammunition and weapons dry, and then they bent their heads to the storm which would beat almost directly in their faces.  Soon it came without much preliminary thunder and lightning.  The morning that had been warm turned cold and the rain poured hard upon them.  Most of the horsemen were wet through in a short time, and they shivered in their sodden uniforms, but it was a condition to which they were used, and they thought little of themselves but nearly all the while of the Potomac.

Few words were spoken.  The only sounds were the driving of the rain and the thud of many hoofs in the mud.  Harry often saw misty figures among the trees on the hills, and he knew that they were watched by hostile eyes as the Northern armies in Virginia, were always watched with the same hostility.  It was impossible for Lee’s men to make any secret march.  The population, intensely loyal to the Union, promptly carried news of it to Meade or his generals.

Twice he pointed out the watchers to Sherburne who merely shrugged his shoulders.

“I might send out men and cut off a few of them,” he said, “but for what good?  Hundreds more would be left and we’d merely be burdened with useless prisoners.  Here’s a creek ahead, Harry, and look how muddy and foamy it is!  It’s probably raining harder higher up in the hills than it is here, and all these creeks and brooks go to swell the Potomac.”

The swift water rose beyond their stirrups and there was a vast splashing as fifteen hundred men rode through the creek.  It was a land of many streams, and a few miles farther on they crossed another, equally swollen and swift.

They had hoped that the rain, like the sudden violence of a summer shower, would pass soon, but the skies remained a solid gray and it settled into a steady solemn pour, cold and threatening, and promising to continue all day long.  They could see that every stream they crossed was far above its normal mark, and the last hope that they might find the Potomac low enough for fording disappeared.