d have rowed with us in the slender boats
on the river and bayous with Mimi and Rosalie and Marianne and all those
other bright and happy ones. He could have danced, too. It was no
strain, we never danced longer than two days and two nights without
stopping, and the festivals, the gay fete days, not more than one a week!
But it was not Auguste's way. A man when he should have been a boy,
and then, alas! a boy when he should have been a man!"

"You speak true words, Hector," said Colonel Leonidas Talbot, "though at
times you seem to me to be rather sentimental. Youth is youth and it has
the pleasures of youth. It is not fitting that a man should be a boy,
but middle-age has pleasures of its own and they are more solid, perhaps
more satisfying than those of youth. I can't conceive of twenty getting
the pleasure out of the noble game of chess that we do. The most
brilliant of your young French Creole dancers never felt the thrill that
I feel when the last move is made and I beat you."

"Then if you expect to experience that thrill, Leonidas, continue the
pursuit of my king, from which you expect so much, and see what will
happen to you."

Colonel Talbot looked keenly at the board, and alarm appeared on his
face. He made a rapid retreat with one of his pieces, and Harry and
Dalton, knowing that it was time for them to go, reached down from their
saddles, shook hands with both, then with St. Clair and Happy Tom,
and were soon beyond the bounds of the camp.

They rode on for many hours in silence. They were in a friendly land now,
but they knew that it was well to be careful, as Federal scouts and
cavalry nevertheless might be encountered at any moment. Two or three
times they turned aside from the road to let detachments of horsemen
pass. They could not tell in the dark and from their hiding places to
which army they belonged, and they were not willing to take the delay
necessary to find out. They merely let them ride by and resumed their
own place on the road.

Harry told Dalton many more details of his perilous journey from the
river to the camp of the commander-in-chief, and he spoke particularly
of Shepard.

"Although he's a spy," he said, "I feel that the word scarcely fits him,
he's so much greater than the ordinary spy. That man is worth more than
a brigade of veterans to the North. He's as brave as a lion, and his
craft and cunning are almost superhuman."

He did not tell that he might easily ha