his courage anew and
rode on bravely, although the sense of loneliness in its full power
remained.

The moonlight was quite bright. The sky was a deep silky blue, in which
myriads of cold stars shone and danced. By and by he skirted for a while
the banks of a small river, which he knew flowed southward into
the Cumberland, and which would not cross his path. The rays of the
moonlight on its frozen surface looked like darts of cold steel.

He left the river presently and the road bent a little toward the north.
Then the skies darkened somewhat but lightened again as the dawn began
to come. The red but cold edge of the sun appeared above the mountains
that he had left behind, and then the morning came, pale and cold.

Dick stopped at a little brook, broke the ice and drank, letting his
horse drink after him. Then he ate heartily of the cold bread and meat
in his knapsack. Pitying his horse he searched until he found a little
grass not yet killed by winter in the lee of the hill, and waited until
he cropped it all.

He mounted and resumed his journey through a country in which the
hills were steadily becoming lower, with larger stretches of level land
appearing between them. By night he should be beyond the last low swell
of the mountains and into the hill region proper. As he calculated
distances his heart gave a great thump. He was to locate Buell some
distance north of Green River, and his journey would take him close to
Pendleton.

The boy was torn by great and conflicting emotions. He would carry
out with his life the task that Thomas had assigned to him, and yet he
wished to stop near Pendleton, if only for an hour.

Yes an hour would do! And it could not interfere with his duty! But
Pendleton was a Southern stronghold. Everybody there knew him, and they
all knew, too, that he was in the service of the North. How could he
pass by without being seen and what might happen then? The terrible
conflict went on in his mind, and it was stilled only when he decided to
leave it to time and chance.

He rode that day almost without interruption, securing an ample dinner,
where no one chose to ask questions, accepting him at his own statement
of himself and probably believing it. He heard that a small Southern
force was to the southward, probably marching toward Bowling Green,
where a great Confederate army under Albert Sidney Johnston was said to
be concentrated. But the news gave him no alarm. His own road was still