“I suppose it is so. But oh, Dicky, won’t this terrible war be over soon?”
“I don’t think so, mother. It’s scarcely begun yet.”
Mrs. Mason said nothing, but stared into the coals. The great negress, Juliana, standing at the window, did not move.
“I suppose you are right, Dick,” she said at last with a sigh, “but it is awful that our people should be arrayed so against one another. There is your cousin, Harry Kenton, a good boy, too, on the other side.”
“Yes, mother, I caught a glimpse of him at Bull Run. We came almost face to face in the smoke. But it was only for an instant. Then the smoke rushed in between. I don’t think anything serious has happened to him.”
Mrs. Mason shuddered.
“I should mourn him next to you,” she said, “and my brother-in-law, Colonel Kenton, has been very good. He left orders with his people to watch over us here. Pendleton is strongly Southern as you know, but nobody would do us any harm, unless it was the rough people from the hills.”
Colonel Kenton’s wife had been Mrs. Mason’s elder sister, and Dick, as he also sat staring into the coals, wondered why people who were united so closely should yet be divided so much.
“Mother,” he said, “when I came through the mountains with my friends we stopped at a house in which lived an old, old woman. She must have been nearly a hundred. She knew your ancestor and mine, the famous and learned Paul Cotter, from whom you and I are descended, and she also knew his friend and comrade, the mighty scout and hunter, Henry Ware, who became the great governor of Kentucky.”
“How strange!”
“But the strangest is yet to be told. Harry Kenton, when he went east to join Beauregard before Bull Run, stopped at the same house, and when she first saw him she only looked into the far past. She thought it was Henry Ware himself, and she saluted him as the governor. What do you think of that, mother?”
“It’s a startling coincidence.”
“But may it not be an omen? I’m not superstitious, mother, but when things come together in such a queer fashion it’s bound to make you think. When Harry’s paths and mine cross in such a manner maybe it means that we shall all come together again, and be united as we were.”
“Maybe.”
“At any rate,” said Dick with a little laugh, “we’ll hope that it does.”
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.