To the scouts and skirmishers and to Dick, wandering through
the forest, nature was an unmitigated foe.
But nothing could stop the boy. He was resolved to get back to the army
with the news that a heavy Southern force was across the Rappahannock.
Others might get there first with the fact, but one never knew. A
hundred might fall by the wayside, leaving it to him alone to bear the
message.
He stumbled on. He was able to keep his cartridges dry in his pouch,
but that was all. His wet, cold clothes flapped around him and he
shivered to the bone. He could see only the loom of the black forest
before him, and sometimes he slipped to the waist in swollen brooks.
Then the wind shifted and drove the sheets of rain, sprinkled with hail,
directly in his face. He was compelled to stop a while and take refuge
behind a big oak. While he shivered in the shelter of the tree the only
things that he thought of spontaneously were dry clothes, hot food,
a fire and a warm bed. The Union and its fate, gigantic as they were,
slipped away from his mind, and it took an effort of the will to bring
them back.
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