第56章 CHAPTER XI IN VIRGINIA(1)

Harry left the valley with the keenest feeling of regret, realizing at the parting how strong a friendship he had formed with this family.

But he felt that he could not delay any longer. Affairs must be moving now in the great world in the east, and he wished to be at the heart of them. He had a strong, sure-footed horse, and he had supplies and an extra suit of clothes in his saddle bags. The rifle across his back would attract no attention, as all the men in the mountains carried rifles.

Jarvis had instructed Harry carefully about the road or path, and as the boy was already an experienced traveler with an excellent sense of direction, there was no danger of his getting lost in the wilderness.

Jarvis, Ike, and Mrs. Simmons gave him farewells which were full of feeling. Aunt Suse had come down the brick walk, tap-tapping with her cane, as Harry stood at the gate ready to mount his horse.

"Good-bye, Aunt Susan," he said. "I came a stranger, but this house has been made a home to me."She peered up at him, and Harry saw that once more her old eyes were flaming with the light he had seen there when he arrived.

"Good-bye, governor," she said, holding out a wrinkled and trembling hand. "I am proud that our house has sheltered you, but it is not for the last time. You will come again, and you will be thin and pale and in rags, and you will fall at the door. I see you coming with these two eyes of mine.""Hush, Aunt Suse," exclaimed Mrs. Simmons. "It is not Governor Ware, it is his great-grandson, and you mustn't send him away tellin' of terrible things that will happen to him.""I'm not afraid," said Harry, "and I hope that I'll see Aunt Susan and all of you again."He lifted her hand and kissed it in the old-fashioned manner.

She smiled and he heard her murmur:

"It is the great governor's way. He kissed my hand like that once before, when I went to Frankfort on the lumber raft.""Good-bye, Harry," repeated Jarvis. "If you're bound to fight I reckon that's jest what you're bound to do, an' it ain't no good for me to say anythin'. Be shore you follow the trail jest as I laid it out to you an' in two days you'll strike the Wilderness Road. After that it's easy."When Harry rode away something rose in his throat and choked him for a moment. He knew that he would never again find more kindly people than these simple mountaineers. Then in vivid phrases he heard once more the old woman's prophecy: "You will come again, and you will be thin and pale and in rags, and you will fall at the door." For a moment it shadowed the sunlight. Then he laughed at himself. No one could see into the future.

He was now across the valley and his path led along the base of the mountain. He looked back and saw the four standing on the porch, Jarvis, Ike, Mrs. Simmons, and old Aunt Suse. He waved his hand to them and all four waved back. A singular thrill ran through him. Could it be possible that he would come again, and in the manner that the old woman had predicted?

The path, in another minute, curved around the mountain, and the valley was shut from view. Nor, as he rode on, did he catch another glimpse of it. One might roam the mountains for months and never see the home of Samuel Jarvis.

The two days passed without event. The weather remained fair, and no one interfered with him. He slept the first night at a log cabin that Jarvis had named, having reached it in due time, and the second day he reached, also in due time, the old Wilderness Road.

Thence the boy advanced by easy stages into Virginia until he reached a railroad, where he sold his horse and took a train for Richmond, having come in a few days out of the cool, peaceful atmosphere of the mountains into another, which was surcharged everywhere with the fiery breath of war.

Harry realized as he approached the capital the deep intensity of feeling in everybody. The Virginians were less volatile than the South Carolinians, and they had long refused to go out, but now that they were out they were pouring into the Southern army, and they were animated by an extraordinary zeal. He began to hear new or unfamiliar names, Early, and Ewell, and Jackson, and Lee, and Johnston, and Hill, and Stuart, and Ashby, names that he would never forget, but names that as yet meant little to him.

He had letters from his father and he expected to find his friends of Charleston in Richmond or at the front. General Beauregard, whom he knew, would be in command of the army threatening Washington, and he would not go into a camp of strangers.

It was now early in June, and the country was at its best. On both sides of the railway spread the fair Virginia fields, and the earth, save where the ploughed lands stretched, was in its deepest tints of green. Harry, thrusting his head from the window, looked eagerly ahead at the city rising on its hills. Then a shade smaller than Charleston, it, too, was a famous place in the South, and it was full of great associations. Harry, like all the educated boys of the South, honored and admired its public men. They were mighty names to him. He was about to tread streets that had been trod by the famous Jefferson, by Madison, Monroe, Randolph of Roanoke, and many others. The shades of the great Virginians rose in a host before him.

He arrived about noon, and, as he carried no baggage except his saddle bags and weapons, he was quickly within the city, his papers being in perfect order. He ate dinner, as the noonday meal was then called, and decided to seek General Beauregard at once, having learned from an officer on the train that he was in the city. It was said that he was at the residence of President Davis, called the White House, after that other and more famous one at Washington, in which the lank, awkward man, Abraham Lincoln, now lived.

But Harry paused frequently on the way, as there was nothing to hurry him, and there was much to be seen. If Charleston had been crowded, Richmond was more so. Like all capitals on the verge of a great war, but as yet untouched by its destructive breath, it throbbed with life.