key, and the forest and hills on either shore gave it back, soft and
beautiful on its dying echoes. It seemed to Harry that the volume of
sound, rounded and full, must come from a trumpet of pure gold. He had
read the old romances of the Round Table, and for the moment his head was
full of them. Some knight in the thicket was sending forth a challenge
to him.

But Harry gave no answering defiance. Now the medieval glow was gone,
and he was modern and watchful to the core. He had felt instinctively
that it was a trumpet of the foe, and the Northern trumpets were not
likely to sing there in Virginia unless many Northern horsemen rode
together.

Then he saw their arms glinting among the trees, the brilliant beams of
the sun dancing on the polished steel of saber hilt and rifle barrel.
A minute more, and three hundred Union horsemen emerged from the forest
and rode, in beautiful order, down to the edge of the stream.

Harry regarded them with an admiration which was touched by no hate.
They were heavily built, strong young men, riding powerful horses,
and it was easy for anyone to see that they had been drilled long and
well. Their clothes and arms were in perfect order, every horse had been
tended as if it were to be entered in a ring for a prize. It was his
thought that they were not really enemies, but worthy foes. That ancient
spirit of the tournament, where men strove for the sake of striving,
came to him again.

The Union horsemen rode along the edge of the stream a little space,
and then plunged into a ford. The water rose to their saddle skirts,
but they preserved their even line and Harry still admired. When all