Then the train turned towards the west.  The drizzle of rain had now become a pour, and it drove so heavily that they could see but little outside.  Food was served at noon and afterward many slept in the cramped seats.  Dick, despite his stiff position, fell asleep too.  By the middle of the afternoon everybody in their coach was slumbering soundly except Sergeant Whitley, who sat by the door leading to the next car.

All that afternoon and into the night the train rattled and moved into the west.  The beautiful rolling country was left behind, and they were now among the mountains, whirling around precipices so sharply that often the sleeping boys were thrown from the seats of the coaches.  But they were growing used to hardships.  They merely climbed back again upon the seats, and were asleep once more in half a minute.

The rain still fell and the wind blew fiercely among the somber mountains.  A second engine had been added to the train, and the speed of the train was slackened.  The engineer in front stared at the slippery rails, but he could see only a few yards.  The pitchy darkness closed in ahead, hiding everything, even the peaks and ridges.  The heart of that engineer, and he was a brave man, as brave as any soldier on the battlefield, had sunk very low.  Railroads were little past their infancy then and this was the first to cross the mountains.  He was by no means certain of his track, and, moreover, the rocks and forest might shelter an ambush.

The Alleghanies and their outlying ridges and spurs are not lofty mountains, but to this day they are wild and almost inaccessible in many places.  Nature has made them a formidable barrier, and in the great Civil War those who trod there had to look with all their eyes and listen with all their ears.  The engineer was not alone in his anxiety this night.  Colonel Newcomb rose from an uneasy doze and he went with Major Hertford into the engineer’s cab.  They were now going at the rate of not more than five or six miles an hour, the long train winding like a snake around the edges of precipices and feeling its way gingerly over the trestles that spanned the deep valleys.  All trains made a great roar and rattle then, and the long ravines gave it back in a rumbling and menacing echo.  Gusts of rain were swept now and then into the faces of the engineer, the firemen and the officers.

“Do you see anything ahead, Canby?” said Colonel Newcomb to the engineer.

“Nothing.  That’s the trouble, sir.  If it were a clear night I shouldn’t be worried.  Then we wouldn’t be likely to steam into danger with our eyes shut.  This is a wild country.  The mountaineers in the main are for us, but we are not far north of the Southern line, and if they know we are crossing they may undertake to raid in here.”

“And they may know it,” said the colonel.  “Washington is full of Southern sympathizers.  Stop the train, Canby, when we come to the first open and level space, and we’ll do some scouting ahead.”