"My orderlies will ride with me," said the major; "I may want them. Captain Truman, you will have the second company in marching order, in case I send for them, though I don't know what this affair will amount to; and you will leave a guard at the camp if you are called away." The order was given to Captain Gordon to march. The commander led the column at full gallop, with the colonel at his side, and the orderlies in the rear of them. In less than a minute they came to a road turning off at the left, leading in the direction of the magnate's mansion. It was situated on the side of a hill, and near the top of it. The elevation was elliptical in form, and the loftiest part was not more than sixty feet high, at the summit of which was a Chinese pagoda, painted in gaudy colors. There was a valley behind it; for the major could see the tops of some tall trees, whose roots must be far below the top of the elliptical hill. Beyond it were what the colonel called the mountains, though probably not one of them was more than five hundred feet high. The column followed the road into which it had turned till it came to another; and here the major ordered the captain to halt his company. "Here is another road, Colonel Coffee; and it passes behind the hill which you call Greeltop," said the commander. "Precisely so," replied the magnate, who thought the major had acquired a very good knowledge of the locality when he had been there hardly more than an hour. "Captain Gordon, you will go that way with half your company, and Lieutenant Gilder will follow me," said Major Lyon. "The road through the valley unites with the one from the mountains, by which the guerillas must approach the village. You will move cautiously as you come near this road, and halt there till you hear firing on your right." "You can hardly call it a road through the valley, though the captain can get through without any difficulty," interposed the magnate. "It is all a grove, but the ground has been cleared off." "Dexter, you will call Knox, and scout the road ahead of us. Don't let the enemy see you, and obey the orders of the sergeant," continued the major, as the first platoon rode off. Life Knox was called from his place in the ranks, and the order of the commander given to him. It was the kind of duty the sergeant liked; for he was more at home there than in following military forms; though he was a faithful and obedient soldier, and his captain wished he had a hundred more like him. "Here we go again, Deck," said the sergeant, as they galloped up the road, by the entrance to Colonel Coffee's estate. "Your pa does well to send me along with you this time, and not leave you alone as he did on that bridge." "But I can take care of myself, and I did that time; for I came back like a bad penny," replied Deck.