“You speak true words, Hector,” said Colonel Leonidas Talbot, “though at times you seem to me to be rather sentimental.  Youth is youth and it has the pleasures of youth.  It is not fitting that a man should be a boy, but middle-age has pleasures of its own and they are more solid, perhaps more satisfying than those of youth.  I can’t conceive of twenty getting the pleasure out of the noble game of chess that we do.  The most brilliant of your young French Creole dancers never felt the thrill that I feel when the last move is made and I beat you.”

“Then if you expect to experience that thrill, Leonidas, continue the pursuit of my king, from which you expect so much, and see what will happen to you.”

Colonel Talbot looked keenly at the board, and alarm appeared on his face.  He made a rapid retreat with one of his pieces, and Harry and Dalton, knowing that it was time for them to go, reached down from their saddles, shook hands with both, then with St. Clair and Happy Tom, and were soon beyond the bounds of the camp.

They rode on for many hours in silence.  They were in a friendly land now, but they knew that it was well to be careful, as Federal scouts and cavalry nevertheless might be encountered at any moment.  Two or three times they turned aside from the road to let detachments of horsemen pass.  They could not tell in the dark and from their hiding places to which army they belonged, and they were not willing to take the delay necessary to find out.  They merely let them ride by and resumed their own place on the road.

Harry told Dalton many more details of his perilous journey from the river to the camp of the commander-in-chief, and he spoke particularly of Shepard.

“Although he’s a spy,” he said, “I feel that the word scarcely fits him, he’s so much greater than the ordinary spy.  That man is worth more than a brigade of veterans to the North.  He’s as brave as a lion, and his craft and cunning are almost superhuman.”

He did not tell that he might easily have put Shepard forever out of the way, but that his heart had failed him.  Yet he did not feel remorse nor any sense of treachery to his cause.  He would do the same were the same chance to come again.  But it seemed to him now that a duel had begun between Shepard and himself.  They had been drifting into it, either through chance or fate, for a long time.  He knew that he had a most formidable antagonist, but he felt a certain elation in matching himself against one so strong.

They rode all night and the next day across the strip of Maryland into Virginia and once more were among their own people, their undoubted own.  They were now entering the Valley of Virginia where the great Jackson had leaped into fame, and both Harry and Dalton felt their hearts warm at the greetings they received.  Both armies had marched over the valley again and again.  It was torn and scarred by battle, and it was destined to be torn and scarred many times more, but its loyalty to the South stood every test.  This too was the region in which many of the great Virginia leaders were born, and it rejoiced in the valor of its sons.