It had not been so many months since he had been in Pendleton, and yet it
seemed years and years. Three great battles in which seventy or eighty
thousand men had fallen were enough to make anybody older.
Dick paused on the crest of a little hill and looked toward the place
where his mother's house stood. He had come just in this way in the
winter, and he looked forward to another meeting as happy. The moonlight
was very clear now and he saw no smoke rising from the chimneys, but this
was summer, and of course they would not have a fire burning at such an
hour.
He rode on a little further and paused again at the crest of another
hill. His view of Pendleton here was still better. He could see more
roofs, and walls, but he noticed that no smoke rose from any house.
Pendleton lay very still in its hollow. On the far side he saw the white
walls of Colonel Kenton's house shining in the moonlight. Something
leaped in his brain. He seemed to have been looking upon such white
walls only yesterday, white walls that stood out in a fiery haze, white
walls that he could never forget though he lived to be a hundred.
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