“Thank you very much, Captain,” he said, “but you needn’t trouble yourself about me.  Perhaps I’d better go on ahead.  One rides faster alone.”

“Don’t be afraid that we’ll hold you back,” said the captain, smiling.  “We’re one of the hardest riding detachments in General Pleasanton’s whole cavalry corps, and we won’t delay you a second.  On the contrary, we know the road so well that we’ll save you wandering about and losing time.”

Harry did not dare to say more.  And so Providence, which had been watching over him so well, had decided now to leave him and watch over the other fellow.  But he had at least one consolation.  Pleasanton was on Lee’s flank and their ride did not turn him from the line of his true objective.  Every beat of his horse’s hoofs would bring him nearer to Lee.  Invincible youth was invincibly in the saddle again, and he said confidently to the captain: 

“Let’s start.”

“All right.  You keep by my side, Haskell.  You appear to be brave and intelligent and I want to ask you questions.”

The tone, though well meant, was patronizing, but Harry did not resent it.

“This troop is made up of Massachusetts men, and I’m from Massachusetts too,” continued the captain.  “My name is Lester, and I had just graduated from Harvard when the war began.”

“Good stock up there in Massachusetts,” said Harry boldly, “but I’ve one objection to you.”

“What’s that?”

“Everything wonderful in our history was done by you.  No chance was left for anybody else.”

“Well, not everything, but almost everything.  Good old Massachusetts!  As Webster said, ‘There she stands!’”

“It was mostly New York and Pennsylvania that stood at Gettysburg.”

“Yes, you did very well there.”

“Don’t you think, Captain, that a nation or a state is often lucky in its possession of writers?”

“I don’t catch your drift exactly.”

“I’ll make an illustration.  I’ve often wondered what were the Persian accounts of Marathon and Thermopylae, of Salamis and Plataea.  Now most of our history has been written by Massachusetts men.”

“And you insinuate that they have glorified my state unduly?”

“The expression is a trifle severe.  Let’s say that they have dwelled rather long upon the achievements of Massachusetts and not so long upon those of New York and Pennsylvania.”

“Then let New York and Pennsylvania go get great writers.  No state can be truly great without them.  There’s another detachment of ours just ahead, but we’ll talk to them only a minute or two.”

The second detachment reported that Pleasanton, with a heavy cavalry force, was about six miles farther west and that there was a fair road all the way.  They should overtake him in an hour.

Harry’s heart beat hard.  Unless something happened within that hour he would never reach Lee, and his brain began to work with extraordinary activity.  Plans passed in review before it as rapidly as pictures on a film, but all were rejected.  He was in despair.  They were trotting rapidly down a smooth road.  A quarter of an hour passed and then a half-hour.  A low bare hill appeared immediately on their right, and Harry saw beyond it the tops of trees.