Toward midnight, on the farther edge of the wood, a post of the horse artillery relieved its pickets. The sound of the retiring steps died away and the fresh sentinels took cognizance of their positions. The positions were some distance apart, between them wood and uneven ground and the murmurous night. Each picket was a lonely man, with the knowledge only that if he raised his voice to a shout he would be heard. The moon shone brightly. It silvered the Beverly Ford road and made a frosted wall of the forest left and right, and bathed with the mildest light the open and undulating country. Somewhere a whip-poor-will was calling. _Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!_ Beside the road sprang a giant sycamore. From beneath it Philip Deaderick, once Richard Cleave, standing picket, watched the night. He stood straight and still, powerfully knit, his short rifle in the hollow of his arm. He stood grave and quiet, a wronged but not unhappy man. The inner life, the only life, had marched on. A gulf had opened and certain hopes and happinesses had fallen therein, but his life was larger than those hopes and happinesses. The inner man had marched on. He had marched even with a quickened step in this last month. “What did it matter?” reasoned Cleave. “Those whom I love know, and I am not cut off from service, no, nor from growth!” Around, above, below the sharpened point of the moment he was aware enough of the larger man. The point might ache at times, but he knew also impersonal freedom.... Things might be righted some day or they might not be righted. He could wait. He looked from the shadow of the sycamore out upon the lovely, moonlit land. Tragedy, death, and sorrow through all the world, interpretations at grips, broken purposes, misunderstandings, humanity groping, groping! He ached for it all—for the woman sleepless on her pillow, for the prisoner in prison. The spirit widened; he stood calm under all, quiet, with suspended judgment. _Whip-poor-will! Whip-poor-will!_ He looked up and studied the stars between the silver branches of the sycamore, then dropped his gaze and leaned slightly forward, for he heard the tread of horses on the road. Two horsemen, one in front, the other a little way behind, came quietly up the silver streak. “Halt!” said Deaderick. The two drew rein. “All right!” said the one in advance. “A friend. Colonel of Cary’s Legion, with an orderly.” “Advance, friend, and give the countersign.” “_Ivry._” “Correct, _Ivry_. Pass!” The officer, with a motion of his hand to the orderly to stay where he was, came closer to the picket. “Before I do so,” he said, and his tone was a strange one, “tell me your name.” “Philip Deaderick.” “You are trying to disguise your voice.... _Richard!_” “Don’t, Fauquier! I am Philip Deaderick, gunner in ——’s battery, horse artillery.” “How long?” “Since Groveton. Don’t betray me.”