also, Mr. Kenton, and return to me in an hour
with such news as you may have."

Harry went gladly. Sometimes he longed to be at the front with Turner
Ashby, there where the rifles were often crackling.

"What will he do? Will he turn now?" said Sherburne anxiously to Harry.

"I heard General Jackson say that he would never hold another council
of war, and he's keeping his word. Nobody knows his plans, but I think
he'll attack. I feel quite sure of it, captain."

They came soon to a field in which Turner Ashby was sitting on a
horse, examining points further down the valley with a pair of powerful
glasses. Sherburne reported briefly and Ashby nodded, but did not take
the glasses from his eyes. Harry also looked down the valley and his
strong sight enabled him to detect tiny, moving figures which he knew
were those of Union scouts and skirmishers.

Despite his youth and the ardor of battle in his nostrils, Harry felt
the tragedy of war in this pleasant country. It was a noble landscape,
that of the valley between the blue mountains. Before him stretched low
hills, covered here and there with fine groups of oak or pine without
undergrowth. Houses of red brick, with porticoes and green shutters,
stood in wide grounds. Most of them were inhabited yet, and their owners
always brought information to the soldiers of the South, never to those
of the North.

The earth had not yet dried fully from the great rains, and horses and
cannon wheels sank deep in the mud, whenever they left the turnpike
running down the center of the valley and across which a Northern army
under Shields lay. The men in blue occupied a wide stretch of grassy
fields on the east, and on the west a low hill, with a small grove
growing on the crest. Dominating the whole were the lofty cliffs of
North Mountain on the west. The main force of the North, strengthened
with cannon, lay to the east of the turnpike. But on the hill to the
west were two strong batteries and near it were lines of skirmishers.
Shields, a veteran of the Mexican war himself, was not present at this
moment, but Kimball, commanding in his absence, was alert and did not
share the general belief that Stonewall Jackson might be considered
non-existent.

Harry, things coming into better view, the longer he looked, saw much of
the Union position, and Turner Ashby presently handed him the glasses.
Then he plainly discerned the guns and a great mass of infantry, with
the colors waving above