As the train slowed down, Harry arose and stood in the aisle. The stranger also stood up, and Harry noticed that his bearing was military. He looked around, his eyes met Harry's—perhaps he had been observing him in the night—and he smiled. It was a rare, illuminating smile that made him wonderfully attractive, and Harry smiled back. He did not know it, but he was growing lonely, with the loneliness of youth, and he wanted a friend.
"You are stopping in Nashville?" said the man with the friendliness of the time.
"For a day only. I am then going further south."
Harry had answered without hesitation. He did not believe it possible that this man could be planning anything against him or his errand. The tall stranger looked upon him with approval.
"I noticed you in the train last night when you slept," he said, speaking in the soft, musical accents of the seaboard South. "Your sleep was very deep, almost like collapse. You showed that you had been through great physical and mental strain, and even before you fell asleep your anxious look indicated that you rode on an errand of importance."
Harry gazed at him in surprise, mingled with a little alarm. The strange man laughed musically and with satisfaction.
"I am neither a detective nor a conspirator," he said. "These are times when men travel upon anxious journeys. I go upon one myself, but since we are in Tennessee, well south of the Mason and Dixon line, I make no secret of it. I am Leonidas Talbot, of South Carolina, until a week ago a colonel in the American army, but now bound for my home in Charleston. You boarded this train at a station in Kentucky, either the nearest or among the nearest to Pendleton. A resemblance, real or fancied, has caused me to notice you closely."
The man was looking at him with frank blue eyes set well apart, and Harry saw no need of concealing his identity.
"My name is Kenton, Henry Kenton—though people generally call me Harry—and I live at Pendleton in Kentucky," he replied.
Now the smile of Leonidas Talbot, late colonel U. S. A., became rarely sweet.