Yet the uncommon dryness, the least rainy summer and
autumn in two generations, still prevailed. The hoofs of Dick's horse
left a cloud of dust behind him. The leaves of the trees were falling
already, rustling dryly as they fell. Brooks that were old friends of
his and that he had never known to go dry before were merely chains of
yellow pools in a shallow bed.
He watered his horse at one or two of the creeks that still flowed in
good volume, and then went on again, sometimes at a gallop. He passed
but one horseman, a farmer who evidently had taken an unusually early
start for a mill, as a sack of corn lay across his saddle behind him.
Dick nodded but the farmer stared open-mouthed at the youth in the blue
uniform who flew past him.
Dick never looked back and by dawn he was with the army. He found
Colonel Winchester taking breakfast under the thin shade of an oak,
and joined him.
"What did you find, Dick?" asked the colonel, striving to hide the note
of anxiety in his voice.
"I found all right at the house, but I did not see mother."
"What had become of her?"
"I learned from a friend that in order to be out of the path of the army
or of prowling bands she had gone to relatives of ours in Danville.
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