While the boy was not noticing his mother had made a sign to Juliana, who had crept out of the room.  Now she returned, bearing food upon a tray, and Dick, although he was not hungry, ate to please his mother.

“You will stay until morning?” she said.

“No, mother.  I can’t afford to be seen here.  I must leave in the dark.”

“Then until it is nearly morning.”

“Nor that either, mother.  My time is about up already.  I could never betray the trust that General Thomas has put in me.  My dispatches not only tell of the gathering of our own troops, but they contain invaluable information concerning the Confederate concentration which General Thomas learned from his scouts and spies.  Mother, I think a great battle is coming here in the west.”

She shuddered, but she did not seek again to delay him in his duty.

“I am proud,” she said, “that you have won the confidence of your general, and that you ride upon such an important errand.  I should have been glad if you had stayed at home, Dick, but since you have chosen to be a soldier, I am rejoiced that you have risen in the esteem of your officers.  Write to me as often as you can.  Maybe none of your letters will reach me, but at least start them.  I shall start mine, too.”

“Of course, mother,” said Dick, “and now it’s time for me to ride hard.”

“Why, you have been here only a half hour!”

“Nearer an hour, mother, and on this journey of mine time means a lot.  I must say good-bye now to you and Juliana.”

The two women followed him down the lawn to the point where his horse was hitched between the two big pines.  Mrs. Mason patted the horse’s great head and murmured to him to carry her son well.

“Did you ever see a finer horse, mother?” said Dick proudly.  “He’s the very pick of the army.”

He threw his arms around her neck, kissed her more than once, sprang into the saddle and rode away in the darkness.

The two women, the black and the white, sisters in grief, and yet happy that he had come, went slowly back into the house to wait, while the boy, a man’s soul in him, strode on to war.

Dick was far from Pendleton when the dawn broke, and now he had full need of caution.  His horse was bearing him fast into debatable ground, where every man suspected his neighbor, and it remained for force alone to tell to which side the region belonged.  But the extreme delicacy of the tension came to Dick’s aid.  People hesitated to ask questions, lest questions equally difficult be asked of them in return.  It was a great time to mind one’s own business.

He rode on, fortune with him for the present, and his course was still west slightly by north.  He slept under roofs, and he learned that in the country into which he had now come the Union sympathizers were more numerous than the Confederate.  The majority of the Kentuckians, whatever their personal feelings, were not willing to shatter the republic.