roll tied to his saddle, was very comfortable now, with his
head on his knapsack. The night had turned cooler, and, save when faint
and far lightning quivered, it was heavy and dark with clouds. But the
young lieutenants, hardened by two years of war and life in the open,
felt snug and cosy on the broad, sheltered piazza. It was not often they
found such good quarters, and Dick, like Colonel Winchester, was truly
thankful that they had reached Bellevue before the coming storm.

It was evident now that the night was going to be wild. The lightning
grew brighter and came nearer, cutting fiercely across the southern sky.
The ominous rumble of thunder, which reminded Dick so much of the mutter
of distant battle, came from the horizon on which the lightning was
flashing.

Colonel Winchester, Pennington and Warner had gone to sleep, but Dick
was wakeful. He had again that feeling of pity for the people who had
been compelled to flee from such a house, and who might lose it forever.
It seemed to him that all the men, save himself and the sentinels, were
asleep, sleeping with the soundness and indifference to surroundings
shown by men who took their sleep when they could.

The horses stamped and moved uneasily beneath the threat of the
advancing storm, but the men slept heavily on.

Dick knew that the sentinels were awake and watchful. They had a
wholesome dread of Forrest and Wheeler, those wild riders of the South.
Some of them had been present at that terrible surprise in Tennessee,
and they were not likely to be careless when they were sure that Forrest
might be near, but he remained uneasy nevertheless, and, although he
closed his eyes and sought a soft place for his head on the saddle,
sleep did not come.

He was sure that his apprehension did not come from any fear of an
attack by Forrest or Wheeler. It was deeper-seated. The inherited sense
that belonged to his great grandfather, who had lived his life in the
wilderness, was warning him. It was not superstition. It seemed to Dick
merely the palpable result of an inheritance that had gone into the
blood. His famous great-grandfather, Paul Cotter, and his famous friend,
Henry Ware, had lived so much and so long among dangers that the very
air indicated to them when they were at hand.

Dick looked down the long piazza, so long that the men at either end of
it were hidden by darkness. The tall trees in the grounds were nodding
before the wind, and the lightning flashe