The Rock of Chickamauga | Page 7

on the broad, sheltered piazza. It
was not often they found such good quarters, and Dick, like Colonel
Winchester, was truly thankful that they had reached Bellevue before
the coming storm.
It was evident now that the night was going to be wild. The lightning

grew brighter and came nearer, cutting fiercely across the southern sky.
The ominous rumble of thunder, which reminded Dick so much of the
mutter of distant battle, came from the horizon on which the lightning
was flashing.
Colonel Winchester, Pennington and Warner had gone to sleep, but
Dick was wakeful. He had again that feeling of pity for the people who
had been compelled to flee from such a house, and who might lose it
forever. It seemed to him that all the men, save himself and the
sentinels, were asleep, sleeping with the soundness and indifference to
surroundings shown by men who took their sleep when they could.
The horses stamped and moved uneasily beneath the threat of the
advancing storm, but the men slept heavily on.
Dick knew that the sentinels were awake and watchful. They had a
wholesome dread of Forrest and Wheeler, those wild riders of the
South. Some of them had been present at that terrible surprise in
Tennessee, and they were not likely to be careless when they were sure
that Forrest might be near, but he remained uneasy nevertheless, and,
although he closed his eyes and sought a soft place for his head on the
saddle, sleep did not come.
He was sure that his apprehension did not come from any fear of an
attack by Forrest or Wheeler. It was deeper-seated. The inherited sense
that belonged to his great grandfather, who had lived his life in the
wilderness, was warning him. It was not superstition. It seemed to Dick
merely the palpable result of an inheritance that had gone into the blood.
His famous great-grandfather, Paul Cotter, and his famous friend,
Henry Ware, had lived so much and so long among dangers that the
very air indicated to them when they were at hand.
Dick looked down the long piazza, so long that the men at either end of
it were hidden by darkness. The tall trees in the grounds were nodding
before the wind, and the lightning flashed incessantly in the southwest.
The thunder was not loud, but it kept up a continuous muttering and
rumbling. The rain was coming in fitful gusts, but he knew that it
would soon drive hard and for a long time.

Everybody within Dick's area of vision was sound asleep, except
himself. Colonel Winchester lay with his head on his arm and his
slumber was so deep that he was like one dead. Warner had not stirred
a particle in the last half-hour. Dick was angry at himself because he
could not sleep. Let the storm burst! It might drive on the wide roof of
the piazza and the steady beating sound would make his sleep all the
sounder and sweeter. He recalled, as millions of American lads have
done, the days when he lay in his bed just under the roof and heard hail
and sleet drive against it, merely to make him feel all the snugger in the
bed with his covers drawn around him.
The fitful gusts of rain ceased, and then it came with a steady pour and
roar, driving directly down, thus leaving the men on the outer edges of
the piazzas untouched and dry. Still, Dick did not sleep, and at last he
arose and walked softly into the house. Here the sense of danger grew
stronger. He was reminded again of his early boyhood, when some one
blindfolded was told to find a given object, and the others called "hot"
when he was near or "cold" when he was away. He was feeling hot now.
That inherited sense, the magnetic feeling out of the past, was warning
him.
Dick felt sure that some one not of their regiment was in the building.
He neither saw nor heard the least sign of a presence, but he was
absolutely certain that he was not alone within Bellevue. Since the
lightning had ceased it was pitchy dark inside. There was a wide hall
running through the building, with windows above the exits, but he saw
nothing through them save the driving rain and the dim outline of the
threshing trees.
He turned into one of the side rooms, and then he paused and pushed
himself against the wall. He was sure now that he heard a soft footstep.
The darkness was so intense that it could be felt like a mist. He waited
but he did not hear it again, and then he began to make his way around
the wall, stepping as lightly as he could.
He