men of that
army shoot up into the air before such a sheet of metal, and you heard
the cracking of bones like the breaking up of ice. After awhile those
that lived had to turn back; human beings could not stand more, and we
were glad when it was all over."

Talbot stayed a little while with them. Then he and his men, like the
Northern cavalry, whirled off in a cloud of dust, and the little convoy
resumed its solemn march southward, reaching Richmond in safety.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE DESPATCH BEARER

Leaves of yellow and red and brown were falling, and the wind that came
up the valley played on the boughs like a bow on the strings of a
violin. The mountain ridges piled against each other cut the blue sky
like a saber's edge, and the forests on the slopes rising terrace above
terrace burned in vivid colours painted by the brush of autumn. The
despatch bearer's eye, sweeping peaks and slopes and valleys, saw
nothing living save himself and his good horse. The silver streams in
the valleys, the vivid forests on the slopes and the blue peaks above
told of peace, which was also in the musical note of the wind, in the
shy eyes of a deer that looked at him a moment then fled away to the
forest, and in the bubbles of pink and blue that floated on the silver
surface of the stream at his feet.

Prescott had been into the far South on a special mission from the
Confederate Government in Richmond after his return from the Wilderness
and complete recovery from his wound, and now he was going back through
a sea of mountains, the great range that fills up so much of North
Carolina and its fifty thousand square miles, and he was not sorry to
find the way long. He enjoyed the crisp air, the winds, the burning
colours of the forest, the deep blue of the sky and the infinite peace.
But the nights lay cold on the ridges, and Prescott, when he could find
no cabin for shelter, built a fire of pine branches and, wrapping
himself in his blanket, slept with his feet to the coals. The cold
increased by and by, and icy wind roared among the peaks and brought a
skim of snow. Then Prescott shivered and pined for the lowlands and the
haunts of men.

He descended at last from the peaks and entered a tiny hamlet of the
backwoods, where he found among other things a two-weeks-old Richmond
newspaper. Looking eagerly through its meager columns to see what had
happened while he was buried in the hills, he learned that there was no
new stage in