"That is, after you pass through Williamsport?"
"Yes, a mile or two beyond."
The light increased. Gold clouds barred the east, the cocks crew, and crows came cawing from the woods to the vast, brown cornfields. The road now ran at no great distance from the canal and the river. First came the canal, mirroring between trodden banks the red east, then the towpath, a cornfield, a fringe of sycamore, oak, and willow, then the Potomac veiled with mist. They were drawing near to Williamsport. The day's travel had begun. They met or overtook workers upon the road, sutlers' carts, ordnance wagons, a squad of artillerymen conducting a gun, a country doctor in an old buggy, two boys driving calves yoked together. The road made a curve to the north, like a sickle. On the inland side it ran beneath a bluff; on the other a rail fence rimmed a twelve-foot embankment dropping to a streamlet and a wide field where the corn stood in shocks. Here, at a cross-roads debouching from the north into the pike, they encountered a company of infantry.
Marchmont checked his horse. "I'm not sure, but I think I know the officer. Be so good as to await me a moment, lieutenant."
He rode up to the captain in blue, and the two talked in low voices. The infantrymen broke lines a little, leaned on their rifles, and discussed arrangements for breakfast. Among them were a number of tall men, lean and sinewy, with a sweep of line and unconstraint of gesture that smacked of hunters' ways and mountain exercise. The two troopers from Frederick City came up. The place of the cross-roads showed animated and blue. The sun pushed its golden ball above the hilltops, and all the rifle barrels gleamed in the light. Marchmont and the new-met captain approached the courier from Kelly, sitting his horse in the middle of the road. "Lieutenant McNeill," said the aide with quietness, "there seemed, at Frederick, some irregularity in your papers. Doubtless everything can be explained, and your delay in reaching Romney will be slight. It is my duty to conduct you to Williamsport headquarters, and to report the matter to the colonel commanding. I regret the interruption—not a long continued one, I trust—to our pleasant relations."
McNeill had made a movement of surprise, and his brows had come together. It was but for an instant, then he smiled, and smiled with his eyes. "If such are your orders, sir, neither you nor I can help the matter. To headquarters, of course—the sooner the better! I can have no possible objection."
He touched his horse and advanced a little farther into the road. All the blue soldiers were about him. A sergeant-major, brought for the moment opposite him, uttered an exclamation. "You know this officer, Miller?" called the captain of infantry.
Miller saluted. "No, sir. But I was in the ferry-boat when he crossed yesterday. We talked a little. 'You've got a Southern voice,' says I, and he says, 'Yes. I was born in the valley of the South Branch.' 'You'll find company here,' says I, 'for we've got some northwestern Virginians—'"
"By jingo!" cried the captain, "that's true! There's a squad of them here." He raised his voice. "Men from northwest Virginia, advance!"
A detachment swung forward, lean men and tall, stamped as hunters, eighteenth-century frontiersmen projected to the middle of the nineteenth. "Do any of you men know the South Branch of the Potomac?"