He found Colonel Winchester taking breakfast under the thin shade of an oak, and joined him.
"What did you find, Dick ?" asked the colonel, striving to hide the note of anxiety in his voice.
"I found all right at the house, but I did not see mother." "What had become of her ?" "I learned from a friend that in order to be out of the path of the army or of prowling bands she had gone to relatives of ours in Danville.

Then I came away." "She did well," said Colonel Winchester.

"The rebels are concentrating about Lexington, but the battle, I think, will take place far south of that city." Before the day was old they heard news that changed their opinion for the time at least.

A scout brought news that a division of the Confederate army was much nearer than Lexington; in fact, that it was at Frankfort, the capital of the state.

And the news was heightened in interest by the statement that the division was there to assist in the inauguration of a Confederate government of the state, so little of which the Confederate army held.
Colonel Winchester at once applied to General Buell for permission for a few officers like himself, natives of Kentucky and familiar with the region, to ride forward and see what the enemy was really doing.