t, and now the Wilderness became incredibly lonely and dreary.
Harry felt that if ever a region was haunted by ghosts it was this.
The dead of last year's battle might be lying everywhere, and as the
breeze sprang up the melancholy thickets waved over them.

He was two-thirds of the way toward the point where he expected to find
Longstreet when he heard the sough of a hoof in the mud behind him.

Harry listened and hearing the hoof again he was instantly on his guard.
He did not know it, but the character of the night and the wild aspect of
the Wilderness were bringing out all the primeval and elemental qualities
in his nature. He was the great borderer, Henry Ware, in the Indian-
haunted forest, feeling with a sixth sense, even a seventh sense, the
presence of danger.

He was following a path, scarcely traceable, used by charcoal burners and
wood-cutters, but when he heard the hoof a second time he turned aside
into the deepest of the thickets and halted there. The hoofbeat came a
third time, a little nearer, and then no more. Evidently the horseman
behind him knew that he had turned aside, and was waiting and watching.
He was surely an enemy of great skill and boldness, and it was equally
sure that he was Shepard. Harry never felt a doubt that he was pursued
by the formidable Union spy, and he felt too that he had never been in
greater danger, as Shepard at such a moment would not spare his best
friend.

But he was not afraid. Danger had become so common that one looked upon
it merely as a risk. Moreover, he was never cooler or more ample of
resource. He dismounted softly, standing beside his horse's head,
holding the reins with one hand and a heavy pistol with the other.
He suspected that Shepard would do the same, but he believed that his
eyes and ears were the keener. The man must have been inside the
Confederate lines all the afternoon. Probably he had seen Harry riding
away, and, deftly appropriating a horse, had followed him. There was
no end to Shepard's ingenuity and daring.

Harry's horse was trained to stand still indefinitely, and the young man,
with the heavy pistol, who held the reins was also immovable. The
silence about him was so deep that Harry could hear the frogs croaking
at a distant pool.

He waited a full five minutes, and now, like the wild animals, he relied
more upon ear than eye. He had learned the faculty of concentration and
he bent all his powers upon his hearing. Not th