Chapter 18

THE FINAL RECKONING

They rode a long time through a war-torn country, and the days bound the young men together so closely that, at times, it seemed to them they had fought on the same side all through the war. Sergeant Whitley was usually their guide and he was an expert to bargain for food and forage. He exhibited then all the qualities that afterward raised him so high in the commercial world.

Although they were saddened often by the spectacle of the ruin the long war had made, they kept their spirits, on the whole, wonderfully well. The two colonels, excellent horsemen, were an unfailing source of cheerfulness. When they alluded to the war they remembered only the great victories the South had won, and invariably they spoke of its end as a compromise. They also began to talk of Charleston, toward which their hearts now turned, and a certain handsome Madame Delaunay whom Harry Kenton remembered well.

As they left Virginia and entered North Carolina they heard that the Confederate troops everywhere were surrendering. The war, which had been so terrible and sanguinary only two or three months before, ended absolutely with the South's complete exhaustion. Already the troops were going home by the scores of thousands. They saw men who had just taken off their uniforms guiding the ploughs in the furrows. Smoke rose once more from the chimneys of the abandoned homes, and the boys who had faced the cannon's mouth were rebuilding rail fences. The odor of grass and newly turned earth was poignant and pleasant. The two colonels expanded.

"Though my years have been devoted to military pursuits, Hector," said Colonel Leonidas Talbot, "the agricultural life is noble, and many of the hardy virtues of the South are due to the fact that we are chiefly a rural population."

"Truly spoken, Leonidas, but for four years agriculture has not had much chance with us, and perhaps agriculture is not all. It was the mechanical genius of the North that kept us from taking New York and Boston."

"Which reminds me, Happy," said St. Clair to Langdon, "that, after all, you didn't sleep in the White House at Washington with your boots on."

"I changed my mind," replied Happy easily. "I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings."

Soon they entered the mountains, and they met many Confederate soldiers returning to their homes. Harry always sought from them news of his father, and he learned at last that he was somewhere in the western part of the state. Then he heard, a day or two later, that a band of guerrillas to the south of them were plundering and sometimes murdering. They believed from what details they could gather that it was Slade and Skelly with a new force, and they thought it advisable to turn much farther toward the west.

"The longest way 'round is sometimes the shortest way through," said