Hunter, a week before, had not appeared on Thunder Run Mountain. No torch came near its scattered “valuable property.” The few men left upon the mountain were not pressed or shot or marched away to Yankee prisons. Thunder Run Mountain saw burning buildings in the valleys below and heard tales of devastation, even heard wind of a rumour that Hunter’s line of march lay across it, in which case it might expect to be burned with fire and sowed with salt. It was this rumour that sent Steve Dagg on a visit to a long-forgotten kinswoman in Bedford.... And then the line of march had proved to be by the kinswoman’s house! Steve broke from a band of Federals speaking German and somewhat blindly plunged into the woods toward the Peaks. “Gawd! I reckon they ain’t comin’ to the top of Apple Orchard!” With occasional descents to a hermit’s cabin for food he lay out on Apple Orchard until he had seen the last horseman of the Federal column disappear, Lynchburg direction. It was warm and pleasant on Apple Orchard and the hermit was congenial. Steve stayed on to recuperate. And then, with suddenness, here again in the distance appeared the head of the Federal column—coming back! Steve felt the nightmare redescending. The hermit, who was really lame, went to the nearest hamlet and returned with news. “We got army at Lynchburg—big army. Hunter’s beaten stiff and running this way! He’ll cross at Buford’s again, and I reckon then he’ll keep to the woods and go west. You’d better wait right here—” “Thank you, I thought I would,” said Steve. “A man can have a fightin’ temper, ’n’ yet back off from a locomotive—” Hunter’s thousands disappeared, the last rear guard horseman of them. Steve was content. And then of a suddenness, there burst a quarrel with the hermit. He had a gun and a dog and Steve found it advisable to leave. It came into his head, “The Yanks ain’t goin’ to make any stop this side of Salem, if there! ’n’ if the Second Corps comes along, it’s goin’ to hurry through. If it’s after Hunter it won’t have no time to come gallivantin’ on Thunder Run! Old Jack would ha’ rushed it through like greased lightning, ’n’ I reckon Old Dick or Old Jube, or whatever darn fool’s riskin’ his skin leadin’, ’ll rush it through too!—I’ll go back to Thunder Run.” He began to put his intention into execution, moving across miles of woodland with a certain caution, since there might just possibly be blue stragglers. He found none, however, and came in good spirits to a high point from which he could discern distances of the Liberty pike running southeast to Lynchburg. Upon it, quite far away, was a moving pillar of dust, moving toward him. Steve knew what it was well enough. “Second Corps,” he grinned. “_Yaaih! Yaaaihh!_ Reckon I’ll be travelling along!”