“What do you want?” asked the woman in a tone of ice. “I see that you are Yankee soldiers, and if you intend to rob the house there is no one here to oppose you. Its sole occupants are myself, my granddaughter, and two colored women, our servants. But I tell you, before you begin, that all our silver has been shipped to Nashville.”
Colonel Winchester flushed a deep crimson, and bit his lips savagely.
“Madame,” he said, “we are not robbers and plunderers. These are regular soldiers belonging to General Grant’s army.”
“Does it make any difference? Your armies come to ravage and destroy the South.”
Colonel Winchester flushed again but, remembering his self-control, he said politely:
“Madame, I hope that our actions will prove to you that we have been maligned. We have not come here to rob you or disturb you in any manner. We merely wished to inquire of you if you had seen any other Southern armed forces in this vicinity.”
“And do you think, sir,” she replied in the same uncompromising tones, “if I had seen them that I would tell you anything about it?”
“No, Madame,” replied the Colonel bowing, “whatever I may have thought before I entered your portico I do not think so now.”
“Then it gives me pleasure to bid you good evening, sir,” she said, and shut the door in his face.
Colonel Winchester laughed rather sorely.
“She had rather the better of me,” he said, “but we can’t make war on women. Come on, lads, we’ll ride ahead, and camp under the trees. It’s easy to obtain plenty of fuel for fires.”
“The darkness is coming fast,” said Dick, “and it is going to be very cold, as usual.”
In a half hour the day was fully gone, and, as he had foretold, the night was sharp with chill, setting every man to shivering. They turned aside into an oak grove and pitched their camp. It was never hard to obtain fuel, as the whole area of the great civil war was largely in forest, and the soldiers dragged up fallen brushwood in abundance. Then the fires sprang up and created a wide circle of light and cheerfulness.
Dick joined zealously in the task of finding firewood and his search took him somewhat further than the others. He passed all the way through the belt of forest, and noticed fields beyond. He was about to turn back when he heard a faint, but regular sound. Experience told him that it was the beat of a horse’s hoofs and he knew that some distance away a road must lead between the fields.
He walked a hundred yards further, and climbing upon a fence waited. From his perch he could see the road about two hundred yards beyond him, and the hoof beats were rapidly growing louder. Some one was riding hard and fast.
In a minute the horseman or rather horsewoman, came into view. There was enough light for Dick to see the slender figure of a young girl mounted on a great bay horse. She was wrapped in a heavy cloak, but her head was bare, and her long dark hair streamed almost straight out behind her, so great was the speed at which she rode.
She struck the horse occasionally with a small riding whip, but he was already going like a racer. Dick remembered the slim figure of a girl, and it occurred to him suddenly that this was she whom he had seen in the dusk of the room behind her grandmother. He wondered why she was riding so fast, alone and in the winter night, and then he admitted with a thrill of admiration that he had never seen any one ride better. The hoof beats rose, died away and then horse and girl were gone in the darkness. Dick climbed down from the fence and shook himself. Was it real or merely fancy, the product of a brain excited by so much siege and battle?
He picked up a big dead bough in the wood, dragged it back to the camp and threw it on one of the fires.
“What are you looking so grave about, Dick?” asked Warner.