An hour more and there was still no light in the East.  An hour more and one red streak had shot upward; then ahead of him gleamed a picket fire —­a fire that seemed farther from town than any post he had seen on his way down to the Capital —­but he galloped on.  Within fifty yards a cry came: 

“Halt!  Who comes there?”

“Friend,” he shouted, reining in.  A bullet whizzed past his head as he pulled up outside the edge of the fire and Chad shouted indignantly: 

“Don’t shoot, you fool!  I have a message for General Ward!”

“Oh!  All right!  Come on!” said the sentinel, but his hesitation and the tone of his voice made the boy alert with suspicion.  The other pickets about the fire had risen and grasped their muskets.  The wind flared the flames just then and in the leaping light Chad saw that their uniforms were gray.

The boy almost gasped.  There was need for quick thought and quick action now.

“Lower that blunderbuss,” he called out, jestingly, and kicking loose from one stirrup, he touched Dixie with the spur and pulled her up with an impatient “Whoa,” as though he were trying to replace his foot.

“You come on!” said the sentinel, but he dropped his musket to the hollow of his arm, and, before he could throw it to his shoulder again, fire flashed under Dixie’s feet and the astonished rebel saw horse and rider rise over the pike-fence.  His bullet went overhead as Dixie landed on the other side, and the pickets at the fire joined in a fusillade at the dark shapes speeding across the bluegrass field.  A moment later Chad’s mocking yell rang from the edge of the woods beyond and the disgusted sentinel split the night with oaths.

“That beats the devil.  We never touched him I swear, I believe that hoss had wings.”

Morgan!  The flash of that name across his brain cleared the mystery for Chad like magic.  Nobody but Morgan and his daredevils could rise out of the ground like that in the very midst of enemies when they were supposed to be hundreds of mlles away in Tennessee.  Morgan had cut those wires.  Morgan had every road around Lexington guarded, no doubt, and was at that hour hemming in Chad’s unsuspicious regiment, whose camp was on the other side of town, and unless he could give warning, Morgan would drop like a thunderbolt on it, asleep.  He must circle the town now to get around the rebel posts, and that meant several miles more for Dixie.

He stopped and reached down to feel the little mare’s flanks.  Dixie drew a long breath and dropped her muzzle to tear up a rich mouthful of bluegrass.

“Oh, you beauty!” said the boy, “you wonder!” And on he went, through woodland and field, over gully, log, and fence, bullets ringing after him from nearly every road he crossed.