“Remember,” said Jarvis, “that I ain’t takin’ no sides in this war myself.  If people come along an’ ask me to tell what I know I tell it to ’em, be they Yank or Reb.  Now, I wish good luck to you, Mr. Mason, an’ I wish the same to your cousin, Mr. Kenton.”

Dick, Warner and the sergeant finished the refreshments and rose for the return journey.  They thanked Jarvis, and when they saw that he would take no pay, they did not insist, knowing that it would offend him.  Dick said good-bye to the ancient woman and once again she rose, put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes.

“Paul Cotter was a good man,” she said, “and you who have his blood in your veins are good, too.  I can see it in something that lies back in your eyes.”

She said not another word, but sat down in the chair and stared once more into the coals, dreaming of the far day when the great borderers saved her and others like her from the savages, and thinking little of the mighty war that raged at the base of her hills.

The boys and the sergeant rode fast on the return trail.  They knew that Major Hertford would push forward at all speed to join Thomas, whom they could now locate without much difficulty.  Jarvis and Ike had resumed their fence-mending, but when the trees hid the valley from them a mighty, rolling song came to the ears of Dick, Warner and the sergeant: 

  They bore him away when the day had fled,
  And the storm was rolling high,
  And they laid him down in his lonely bed
  By the light of an angry sky. 
  The lightning flashed, and the wild sea lashed
  The shore with its foaming wave,
  And the thunder passed on the rushing blast
  As it howled o’er the rover’s grave.

“That man’s no fool,” said Dick.

“No, he ain’t,” said the sergeant, with decision, “nor is that nephew Ike of his that he calls a lunkhead.  Did you notice, Mr. Mason, that the boy never spoke a word while we was there?  Them that don’t say anything never have anything to take back.”

They rode hard now, and soon reached Major Hertford with their news.  On the third day thereafter they entered a strong Union camp, commanded by a man named Garfield, the young officer who had won the victory at Middle Creek.

CHAPTER VI

MILL SPRING

Garfield’s camp was on a little group of hills in a very strong position, and his men, flushed with victory, were eager for another encounter with the enemy.  They had plenty of good tents to fend them from the winter weather which had often been bitter.  Throughout the camp burned large fires for which they had an almost unbroken wilderness to furnish fuel.  The whole aspect of the place was pleasing to the men who had marched far and hard.

Major Hertford and his aides, Richard Mason and George Warner, were received in Colonel Garfield’s tent.  A slim young man, writing dispatches at a rude little pine table, rose to receive them.  He did not seem to Dick to be more than thirty, and he had the thin, scholarly face of a student.  His manner was attractive, he shook hands warmly with all three of them and said: