Dick and Shepard entered the woods side by side, and the youth who had
a tendency toward self-analysis found that his liking and respect for
the spy increased. The general profession of a spy might be disliked,
but in Shepard it inspired no repulsion, rather it increased his
heroic aspect, and Dick found himself relying upon him also. He felt
intuitively that when he rode into the forest with Shepard he rode into
no danger, or if by any chance he did ride into danger, they would,
under the guidance of the spy, ride safely out of it again.

Shepard turned his horse toward the deeper forest, which lay on the left,
and very soon they were out of sight of the main column, although the
sound of hoofs and of arms, clinking against one another, still came
faintly to them. Yet peace, the peace for which Dick longed so ardently,
seemed to dwell there in the woods. The summer was well advanced and
as the light winds blew, the leaves, already beginning to dry, rustled
against one another. The sound was pleasant and soothing. He and Harry
Kenton and other lads of their age had often heard it on autumn nights,
when they roamed through the forests around Pendleton in search of the
raccoon and the opossum. It all came back to him with astonishing
vividness and force.

He was boy and man in one. But he could scarcely realize the three years
and more of war that had made him a man. In one way it seemed a century,
and in another it seemed but yesterday. The water rose in his eyes at
the knowledge that this same cousin who was like a brother to him,
one with whom he had hunted, fished, played and swum, was there in the
woods less than a mile away, and that he might be in battle with him
again before morning.