gone with his seceding state, and
criticised him much, but Thomas, chary of speech, hung to his belief,
and proved it by action.

Dick learned, too, that the Southern force operating against Thomas,
while actively led by Zollicoffer, was under the nominal command of
one of his own Kentucky Crittendens. Here he saw again how terribly
his beloved state was divided, like other border states. General
Crittenden's father was a member of the Federal Congress at Washington,
and one of his brothers was a general also, but on the other side. But
he was to see such cases over and over again, and he was to see them to
a still greater and a wholesale degree, when the First Maryland regiment
of the North and the First Maryland regiment of the South, recruited
from the same district, should meet face to face upon the terrible field
of Antietam.

But Antietam was far in the future, and Dick's mind turned from the
cases of brother against brother to the problems of the icy wilderness
through which they were moving, in a more or less uncertain manner.
Sometimes they were sent on false trails, but their loyal mountaineers
brought them back again. They also found volunteers, and Major
Hertford's little force swelled from three hundred to six hundred. In
the main, the mountaineers were sympathetic, partly through devotion
to the Union, and partly through jealousy of the more prosperous
lowlanders.

One day Major Hertford sent Dick, Warner, and Sergeant Whitley, ahead
to scout. He had recognized the ability of the two lads, and also their
great friendship for Sergeant Whitley. It seemed fitting to him that
the three should be nearly always together, and he watched them with
confidence, as they rode ahead on the icy mountain trail and then
disappeared from sight.

Dick and his friends had learned, at mountain cabins which they had
passed, that the country opened out further on into a fine little
valley, and when they reached the crest of a hill somewhat higher than
the others, they verified the truth of the statement. Before them lay
the coziest nook they had yet seen in the mountains, and in the center
of it rose a warm curl of smoke from the chimney of a house, much
superior to that of the average mountaineer. The meadows and corn lands
on either side of a noble creek were enclosed in good fences. Everything
was trim and neat.

The three rode down the slope toward the house, but halfway to the
bottom they reined in their ponies and