Meanwhile, Dan was drawing near the mountains.  He was worn out when he reached Abingdon.  The wound in his shoulder was festering and he was in a high fever.  At the camp of Morgan’s Men he found only a hospital left—­for General Hunt had gone southward—­and a hospital was what he most needed now.  As he lay, unconscious with fever, next day, a giant figure, lying near, turned his head and stared at the boy.  It was Rebel Jerry Dillon, helpless from a sabre cut and frightfully scarred by the fearful wounds his brother, Yankee Jake, had given him.  And thus, Chadwick Buford, making for the Ohio, saw the two strange messmates, a few days later, when he rode into the deserted rebel camp.

All was over.  Red Mars had passed beyond the horizon and the white Star of Peace already shone faintly on the ravaged South.  The shattered remnants of Morgan’s cavalry, pall-bearers of the Lost Cause—­had gone South—­bare-footed and in rags—­to guard Jefferson Davis to safety, and Chad’s heart was wrung when he stepped into the little hospital they had left behind—­a space cleared into a thicket of rhododendron.  There was not a tent—­there was little medicine—­little food.  The drizzling rain dropped on the group of ragged sick men from the branches above them.  Nearly all were youthful, and the youngest was a mere boy, who lay delirious with his head on the root of a tree.  As Chad stood looking, the boy opened his eyes and his mouth twitched with pain.

“Hello, you damned Yankee.”  Again his mouth twitched and again the old dare-devil light that Chad knew so well kindled in his hazy eyes.

“I said,” he repeated, distinctly, “Hello, you damned Yank.  Damned Yank I said.”  Chad beckoned to two men.

“Go bring a stretcher.”

The men shook their heads with a grim smile—­they had no stretcher.

The boy talked dreamily.

“Say, Yank, didn’t we give you hell in—­oh, well, in lots o’ places.  But you’ve got me.”  The two soldiers were lifting him in their arms.  “Goin’ to take me to prison?  Goin’ to take me out to shoot me, Yank?  You are a damned Yank.”  A hoarse growl rose behind them and the giant lifted himself on one elbow, swaying his head from side to side.

“Let that boy alone!” Dan nodded back at him confidently.

“That’s all right, Jerry.  This Yank’s a friend of mine.”  His brow wrinkled.  “At any rate he looks like somebody I know.  He’s goin’ to give me something to eat and get me well—­like hell,” he added to himself—­passing off into unconsciousness again.  Chad had the lad carried to his own tent, had him stripped, bathed, and bandaged and stood looking down at him.  It was hard to believe that the broken, aged youth was the red-cheeked, vigorous lad whom he had known as Daniel Dean.  He was ragged, starved, all but bare-footed, wounded, sick, and yet he was as undaunted, as defiant, as when he charged with Morgan’s dare-devils at the beginning of the war.  Then Chad went back to the hospital—­for a blanket and some medicine.