“Distant dust behind our own lines, and figures moving in it dimly.  Cavalry practicing, I should say.  Have you fellows fruit enough?”

“Plenty.  You can climb down and if the farmer hurries here with his dog to catch you we’ll protect you.”

“This is a fine apple tree,” said Dick, as he descended slowly.  “Apple trees are objects of beauty.  They look so well in the spring all in white bloom, and then they look just as well in the fall, when the red or yellow apples hang among the leaves.  And this is one of the finest I’ve ever seen.”

He did not dream then that he should remember an apple tree his whole life, that an apple tree, and one apple tree in particular, should always call to his mind a tremendous event, losing nothing of its intensity and vividness with the passing years.  But all that was in the future, and when he joined his comrades on the ground he made good work with the biggest and finest apple he could find.

“Early apples,” he said, looking up at the tree.  “It’s not the end of July yet.”

“But good apples, glorious apples, anyhow,” said Pennington, taking another.  “Besides, it’s fine and cool like autumn.”

“It won’t stay,” said Dick.  “We’ve got the whole of August coming.  Virginia is like Kentucky.  Always lots of hot weather in August.  Glad there’s no big fighting to be done just now.  But it’s a pity, isn’t it, to tear up a fine farming country like this.  Around here is where the United States started.  John Smith and Rolfe and Pocahontas and the rest of them may have roamed just where this orchard stands.  And later on lots of the great Americans rode about these parts, some of the younger ones carrying their beautiful ladies on pillions behind them.  You are a cold-blooded New Englander, Warner, and you believe that anyone fighting against you ought to burn forever, but as for me I feel sorry for Virginia.  I don’t care what she’s done, but I don’t like to see the Old Dominion, the Mother of Presidents, stamped flat.”

“I’m not cold-blooded at all, but I don’t gush.  I don’t forget that this state produced George Washington, but I want victory for our side just the same, no matter how much of Virginia we may have to tread down.  Is that farm house over there still empty?”

“Of course, or we wouldn’t have taken the apples.  It belongs to a man named Haynes, and he left ahead of us with his family for Richmond.  I fancy it will be a long time before Haynes and his people sleep in their own rooms again.  Come, fellows, we’d better be going back.  Colonel Winchester is kind to us, but he doesn’t want his officers to be prowling about as they please too long.”

They walked together toward the edge of the orchard and looked at the farm house, from the chimneys of which no smoke had risen in weeks.  Dick felt sure it would be used later on as headquarters by some general and his staff, but for the present it was left alone.  And being within the Union lines no plunderer had dared to touch it.