It seemed to him, as his heart sank, that all things had conspired against him.
But the moment of despair was brief.

He summoned his courage anew and rode on bravely, although the sense of loneliness in its full power remained.
The moonlight was quite bright.

The sky was a deep silky blue, in which myriads of cold stars shone and danced.

By and by he skirted for a while the banks of a small river, which he knew flowed southward into the Cumberland, and which would not cross his path.

The rays of the moonlight on its frozen surface looked like darts of cold steel.
He left the river presently and the road bent a little toward the north.
Then the skies darkened somewhat but lightened again as the dawn began to come.