Lexington.

Straight along the turnpike that ran between the Dean and the Buford
farms, the Fourth Ohio went in a cloud of thick dust that rose and
settled like a gray choking mist on the seared fields. Side by side
rode Harry and Chad, and neither spoke when, on the left, the white
columns of the Dean house came into view, and, on the right, the red
brick of Chad's old home showed through the dusty leaves; not even when
both saw on the Dean porch the figures of two women who, standing
motionless, were looking at them. Harry's shoulders drooped, and he
stared stonily ahead, while Chad turned his head quickly. The front
door and shutters of the Buford house were closed, and there were few
signs of life about the place. Only at the gate was the slouching
figure of Jerome Conners, the overseer, who, waving his hat at the
column, recognized Chad, as he rode by, and spoke to him, Chad thought,
with a covert sneer. Farther ahead, and on the farthest boundary of the
Buford farm, was a Federal fort, now deserted, and the beautiful
woodland that had once stood in perfect beauty around it was sadly
ravaged and nearly gone, as was the Dean woodland across the road. It
was plain that some people were paying the Yankee piper for the
death-dance in which a mighty nation was shaking its feet.

On they went, past the old college, down Broadway, wheeling at Second
Street--Harry going on with the regiment to camp on the other edge of
the town; Chad reporting with his colonel at General Ward's
head-quarters, a columned brick house on one corner of the college
campus, and straight across from the Hunt home, where he had first
danced with Margaret Dean.

That night the two lay on the edge of the Ashland woods, looking up at
the stars, the ripened bluegrass--a yellow, moonlit sea--around them
and the woods dark and still behind them. Both smoked and were silent,
but each knew that to the other his thoughts were known; for both had
been on the same errand that day, and the miserable tale of the last
ten months both had learned.

Trouble had soon begun for the ones who were dear to them, when both
left for the war. At once General Anderson had promised immunity from
arrest to every peaceable citizen in the State, but at once the
shiftless, the prowling, the lawless, gathered to the Home Guards for
self-protection, to mask deviltry and to wreak vengeance for private
wrongs. At once mischief began. Along the Ohio, men with Southern
sympath