Dick from his horse gazed into a valley down which ran a good turnpike, looking white in the moonlight.  Upon this road rode the Southern force in close ranks, but too far away, for any sound of their hoof beats to come to the watchers.  The moon which was uncommonly bright now colored them all with silver, and Dick, with his imaginative mind, easily turned them into a train of the knights of old, clad in glittering mail.  They created such a sense of illusion and distance, time as well as space, that the peace of the moment was not disturbed.  It was a spectacle out of the past, rather than present war.

“You are familiar with the country, of course,” said Dick.

“Yes,” replied Shepard.  “Our road, as you know, is now running parallel with that on which the Southern force is traveling, with a broad ridge between.  But several miles farther on the ridge becomes narrower and the roads merge.  We’re sure to have a fight there.  Like you, I’m sorry your cousin Harry Kenton is with them.”

“It seems that you and he know a good deal of each other.”

“Yes, circumstances have brought us into opposition again and again from the beginning of the war, but the same circumstances have made me know more about him than he does about me.  Yet I mean that we shall be friends when peace comes, and I don’t think he’ll oppose my wish.”

“He won’t.  Harry has a generous and noble nature.  But he wouldn’t stand being patronized, merely because he happened to be on the beaten side.”

“I shouldn’t think of trying to do such a thing.  Now, we’ve seen enough, and I think we’d better go back to the colonels, with our news.”

They rode through the woods again, and, for most of the distance, there was no sound from the marching troops.  The wonderful feeling of peace returned.  The sky was as blue and soft as velvet.  The great stars glittered and danced, and the wind among the rustling leaves was like the soft singing of a violin.  At one point they crossed a little brook which ran so swiftly down among the trees that it was a foam of water.  They dismounted, drank hastily, and then let the horses take their fill.

“I like these hills and forests and their clear waters,” said Dick, “and judging by the appearance it must be a fine country to which we’re coming.”

“It is.  It’s something like your Kentucky Blue Grass, although it’s smaller and it’s hemmed in by sharper and bolder mountains.  But I should say that the Shenandoah Valley is close to a hundred and twenty miles long, and from twenty-five to forty miles wide, not including its spur, the Luray Valley, west of the Massanuttons.”

“As large as one of the German Principalities.”

“And as fine as any of them.”

“It’s where Stonewall Jackson made that first and famous campaign of his.”

“And it’s lucky for us that we don’t have to face him there now.  Early is a good general, they say, but he’s no Stonewall Jackson.”