“Colonel Sherburne may think a good deal of his own immediate troop,” said St. Clair to Harry, “but if the men of the Invincibles could achieve so much on foot they’ll truly deserve their name on horseback.  Where is this enemy of ours?  Lead us to him.”

“You’ll find him soon enough,” said Harry.  “You South Carolina talkers have learned many times that the Yankees will fight.”

“Yes, Harry, I admit it freely.  But you must admit on your part that the South Carolinians will fight as well as talk, although at present most of the South Carolinians in this regiment are Virginians.”

“But not our colonel and lieutenant-colonel,” said Happy Tom.  “Real old South Carolina still leads.”

“May they always lead!” said Harry heartily, looking at the two gray figures.

“Tell Colonel Sherburne,” said Happy Tom, who was in splendid spirits, “that we congratulate him on his promotion and are ready to obey him without question.”

“All right.  He’ll be glad to know that he has your approval.”

“He might have the approval of worse men.  I feel surging within me the talents of a great general, but I’m too young to get ’em recognized.”

“You’ll have to wait until the sections are not fighting each other, but are united against a common foe.  But meanwhile I’ll tell Colonel Sherburne that if he gets into a tight pinch not to lose heart as you are here.”

Saluting Colonel Talbot and Lieutenant-Colonel St. Hilaire, Harry and Dalton rode to the head of the column, where Sherburne led.  They ate their breakfast on horseback, and went swiftly down a valley in the general direction of the Potomac.  The dawn had broadened into full morning, clear and bright, save for a small cloud that hung low in the southwest, which Sherburne noticed with a frown.

“That’s a little cloud and it looks innocent,” he said to Harry, “but I don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“Because in the ten minutes that I’ve been watching it I’ve been able to notice growth.  I’m weather-wise and we may have more rain.  More rain means a higher Potomac.  A higher Potomac means more difficulty in crossing it.  More difficulty in crossing it means more danger of our destruction, and our destruction would mean the end of the Confederacy.”

He spoke with deadly earnestness as he continued to look at the tiny dusky spot on the western sky.  Harry had a feeling of awe.  Again he realized that such mighty issues could turn upon a single hair.  The increase or decrease of that black splotch might mean the death or life of the Confederacy.  As he rode he watched it.

His heart sank slowly.  The little baby cloud, looking so harmless, was growing.  He said to himself in anger that it was not, but he knew that it was.  Black at the center, it radiated in every direction until it became pale gray at the edges, and by and by, as it still spread, it gave to the southwest an aspect that was distinctly sinister.