All
through my boyhood I devoted a great deal of my time to swimming.
Dr. Russell of the Pendleton Academy--but you never knew him--used to say
that if I would swim less and study more I could make greater pretensions
to scholarship."
Shepard, swimming rather easily, regarded him thoughtfully.
"While we talk to each other in this more or less polite manner,
Mr. Kenton," he said, "we must not forget that we're in deadly earnest.
I mean to take you, and our scouts mean to take every other messenger who
goes out from Colonel Sherburne's camp. You know, and I know, that if
the Army of Northern Virginia does not reach in a few days that camp,
where there is a ford in ordinary weather, it will be driven up against
the Potomac and we can accumulate such great forces against it that it
cannot possibly escape. Even at Sherburne's place its escape is more
than doubtful, if it has to linger long."
"Yes, I know these things quite well, Mr. Shepard. I know also, as you
do, that General Meade's army is not in direct pursuit, and, that in a
flanking movement, he is advancing across South Mountain and toward
Sharpsburg. It is a march well calculated and extremely dangerous to
General Lee, if he does not hear of it in time.
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