Dick and Shepard entered the woods side by side, and the youth who had a tendency toward self-analysis found that his liking and respect for the spy increased.  The general profession of a spy might be disliked, but in Shepard it inspired no repulsion, rather it increased his heroic aspect, and Dick found himself relying upon him also.  He felt intuitively that when he rode into the forest with Shepard he rode into no danger, or if by any chance he did ride into danger, they would, under the guidance of the spy, ride safely out of it again.

Shepard turned his horse toward the deeper forest, which lay on the left, and very soon they were out of sight of the main column, although the sound of hoofs and of arms, clinking against one another, still came faintly to them.  Yet peace, the peace for which Dick longed so ardently, seemed to dwell there in the woods.  The summer was well advanced and as the light winds blew, the leaves, already beginning to dry, rustled against one another.  The sound was pleasant and soothing.  He and Harry Kenton and other lads of their age had often heard it on autumn nights, when they roamed through the forests around Pendleton in search of the raccoon and the opossum.  It all came back to him with astonishing vividness and force.

He was boy and man in one.  But he could scarcely realize the three years and more of war that had made him a man.  In one way it seemed a century, and in another it seemed but yesterday.  The water rose in his eyes at the knowledge that this same cousin who was like a brother to him, one with whom he had hunted, fished, played and swum, was there in the woods less than a mile away, and that he might be in battle with him again before morning.

“You were thinking of your cousin, Mr. Kenton,” said Shepard suddenly.

“Yes, but how did you know?” asked Dick in surprise.

“Because your face suddenly became melancholy—­the moonlight is good, enabling me to read your look—­and sadness is not your natural expression.  You recall that your cousin, of whom you think so much, is at hand with your enemies, and the rest is an easy matter of putting two and two together.”

“You’re right in all you say, Mr. Shepard, but I wish Harry wasn’t there.”

Shepard was silent and then Dick added passionately: 

“Why doesn’t the South give up?  She’s worn down by attrition.  She’s blockaded hard and fast!  When she loses troops in battle she can’t find new men to take their places!  She’s short in food, ammunition, medicines, everything!  The whole Confederacy can’t be anything but a shell now!  Why don’t they quit!”

“Pride, and a lingering hope that the unexpected will happen.  Yes, we’ve won the war, Mr. Mason, but it’s yet far from finished.  Many a good man will fall in this campaign ahead of us in the valley, and in other campaigns too, but, as I see it, the general result is already decided.  Nothing can change it.  Look between these trees, and you can see the Southern force now.”