The whole command stopped with beautiful precision, the ranks remaining even.

Then the leader, looking more than ever like a mediaeval knight, rode slowly forward on his great black horse to meet the youth who was running to meet him.
When Harry came near he saw that the man was young, under thirty.
He gazed steadily at the boy out of deep blue eyes, and his hair and beard rippled like molten gold under the light breeze.
"Who are you ?" he asked.
"My name is Kenton, Henry Kenton, and I am a lieutenant in the regiment of the Invincibles, commanded by Colonel Leonidas Talbot! We were sent to take a fort on the other side of the mountain and took it, but the regiment is besieged there by a much larger Northern force, and I came through in the night for help." The man stroked his golden beard and a light leaped up in his eye.
Any dandyish or foppish quality that he might have seemed to have disappeared at once, and Harry saw only the soldier.
"Ah, I have heard of this expedition," he said, "and so the Invincibles are in a trap.

We had started on another errand, but we will go to the relief of Colonel Talbot.

My name is Stuart, lad, J.E.B.Stuart, and this is my command." It was Harry's first meeting with the famous Jeb Stuart, the most picturesque of all the Southern cavalry leaders, although not superior to the illiterate man of genius, Forrest.

Stuart inspired supreme confidence in him.