“I don’t like it,” said the veteran.  “Fogs ain’t to be taken lightly.  I wish this one hadn’t come at this time.  I’m generally scared of most of the things I can’t see.”

“But what have we to be afraid of?” asked Dick.  “We’re here in strong force, and the enemy is too weak to attack.”

“The Johnnies are never too weak to attack.  Rec’lect, too, that this is their country, and they know every inch of it.  I wish Mr. Shepard was here.”

“I think he was detailed for some scout duty off toward the Blue Ridge”

“I don’t know who sent him, but I make bold to say, Mr. Mason, that he could do a lot more good out there in the fog on the other side of Cedar Creek, a-spyin’ and a-spyin’, a-lookin’ and a-lookin’, a-listenin’ and a-listenin’.”

“And perhaps he would neither see nor hear anything”

“Maybe, sir, but if I may make bold again, I think you’re wrong.  Why, I just fairly smell danger.”

“It’s the fog and your fear of it, sergeant.”

“No, sir; it’s not that.  It’s my five senses working all together and telling me the truth.”

“But the pickets have brought in no word.”

“In this fog, pickets can’t see more’n a few yards beyond their beats.  What time is it, Mr. Mason?”

“A little past one in the morning, sergeant.”

“Enough of the night left yet for a lot of mischief.  I’m glad, sir, if I may make bold once more, that the Winchester men stay out of the tents and keep awake.”

Warner joined them, and reported that fresh messengers from the front had given renewed assurances of quiet.  Absolutely nothing was stirring along Cedar Creek, but Sergeant Daniel Whitley was still dissatisfied.

“It’s always where nothin’ is stirrin’ that most is doin’, sir,” he said to Dick.

“You’re epigrammatic, sergeant.”

“I’m what, sir?  I was never called that before.”

“It doesn’t depreciate you.  It’s a flattering adjective, but you’ve set my own nerves to tingling and I don’t feel like sleeping.”

“It never hurts, sir, to watch in war, even when nothing happens.  I remember once when we were in a blizzard west of the Missouri, only a hundred of us.  It was in the country of the Northern Cheyennes, an’ no greater fighters ever lived than them red demons.  We got into a kind of dip, surrounded by trees, an’ managed to build a fire.  We was so busy tryin’ to keep from freezin’ to death that we never gave a thought to Indians, that is ‘ceptin’ one, the guide, Jim Palmer, who knowed them Cheyennes, an’ who kept dodgin’ about in the blizzard, facin’ the icy blast an’ the whirlin’ snow, an’ always lookin’ an’ listenin’.  I owe my life to him, an’ so does every other one of the hundred.  Shore enough the Cheyennes come, ridin’ right on the edge of the blizzard, an’ in all that terrible storm they tried to rush us.  But we’d been warned by Palmer an’ we beat ’em off at last, though a lot of good men bit the snow.  I say again, sir, that you can’t ever be too careful in war.  Do everything you can think of, and then think of some more.  I wish Mr. Shepard would come!”