Gard did not entirely wish to work his way back to the point of view that once had been his, of a spectator of events, who only acted in them in order to appreciate them vividly. He wished to regain his old enthusiasm, the poise and the clear sense of things, the interest, dulled since the Peninsular campaign; and for the rest, to go on to positions requiring new definitions. So far as the general had served as a councillor, he had seemed to advise attention to business, to imply that there was personal value in simple and direct doing.
During the two following days Gard rode along the railroad to Winchester, and up and down the Opequan valley, picking up information and asking such questions as he could make bear on the distribution of tracts. Once or twice he thought he recognized a face he had seen across the road by the Dunker church. It was not impossible. But one could not identify from such smoky glimpses.
On Saturday he left Winchester and went eastward, crossing the Opequan where the turnpike led by a shallow, rippling ford, and the flat-fenced meadows of the bottom lands were all about. His saddle-bags were nearly empty, and beyond the Blue Ridge he might find means to send a message north.
A horseman was watering his horse at the ford, his hat tipped back, a bandage around his head. They greeted, and Gard handed him a tract.
"Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown." It was one of the faces he seemed to have seen.
"Oh, you're that missionary they call 'Abstract Piety.' Well, look here!"
He stopped and stared. Gard leaned forward to let his horse drink, saw his own face in the stream, and wondered what it might mean to the man with the bandage who watched him, and whom he had somewhere seen. It might be a critical question, what his face meant to the man with the bandage. Crises! As one went on, every step was a crisis between the moment past and the moment in front. The current streaked the reflections in the water, and there were little brown minnows holding their heads up-stream. He noticed his own expression in the reflection—the impassive mask that he had come to wear without effort, the spade-shaped beard, the lips whiter than the rest of the tanned skin, which might suggest to the acute that the shaving of them was recent, the swift curve of the hair-line, the heavy eyelids over eyes that looked up dreamily out of the wavering water. He thought that, from an artistic standpoint, he must look his part, or something like it, with an emphasis. But every one travels by his own road to his own conclusions. The man, whose white bandage wavered and gleamed in the water near his own reflection, reminded him of one from whom he had taken a pistol in the cornfield by the Dunker church, whose eyes had been mad and glaring, and his hair soaked in his own blood. In fact, that was the face. Crises! Did it mean the sudden end of his running days? Probably either his or the other man's. Their reflections in the stream seemed to parody them, to watch and mimic. The water chuckled. There was something ironic in things. One fancied the current of time itself to be streaming and streaked yellow in the sunlight, and full of bubbles. The minnows poised and darted against the stream.
Gard's horse flung up his head with a start.
"If the message I have given you is not for you, will you not give it to another?"