Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug 1911-Jan 1912)

Special Messenger (Kalem) By LOUIS REEVES HARRISON Far up on the hill, relieved against the sky, rode Stuart, his plume floating hack on the breeze, his drawn saber whirling and flashing in the sun, the beau ideal of a dashing cavalry officer. To one of his followers, a handful of officers, he gave orders : "To the head of your column, and charge where Aldie has fallen back ! ' ' The Federals had dismounted a double row of marksmen, and, at the same time, their artillery was seen coming into position on the opposite hill. "There is a hornets' nest," Stuart muttered. Then shouting to another of his command, "Tell Wyckham to form on the hill ! " the brilliant leader paused and glanced in swift examination over those who remained. "You, Captain Milroy," he called sharply — a handsome officer mounted on a gray hunter rode up — "you go back and tell Pelham to bring his guns up at a gallop. Diverge and scout to the east — you know the way — and inform me if Bayard's men are swarming up in that direction. ' ' Milroy's face flushed with pleasure, and he echoed a peculiar smile on the great general's lips. Stuart, of unshrinking courage, exhaustless resource and untiring activity, was beloved by his officers and the idol of his men. To the audacious temperament of a born adventurer, this "flower of cavaliers" united the cultivation and experience of a trained soldier; the impetuous charm that won him a thousand devoted friends was only part of a character embodying military genius of the highest order. Brave men were plenty ; leaders growing more scarce every day, he was one of a pitifully small group on whom the fate of the Confederacy hung. Why Milroy was chosen for a mis 39 sion so important was not a matter of great consequence — it might have been because of the gray horse he rode. His mount was a Leicestershire hunter, which had taken many a double ditch and fenced bank in the old country and had often hung on to the last of a straggling field with the same free-lance owner on his back that he now bore. Rupert Milroy was an Englishman by birth, with the spirit of a sportsman in his blood, but without the necessary length of purse to follow the hounds in High Leicestershire for any extended period. Unable to keep the financial pace of his fellows, this light-hearted gentleman had betaken himself and his threehundred-guinea mount to the fair fields and fairer gentry of Virginia, where he had remained to such good purpose that he had married the heiress of a fine estate and settled down to be a new-world old-fashioned gentleman. When war was declared, and all the neighborhood in which he was now fighting had gone frantic with joyous insanity, he had offered his services in defense of his home, as he would have done anywhere else in the world, irrespective of all circumstances not calling upon him to play traitor to the land of his birth, and he had gradually reached the notice and confidence of splendid Stuart. The fleeting smile he had caught on his general's lips and the one with which he had responded were born of a joint knowledge that his scouting mission would take him within view of Fairwood, the house of his Virginia bride and her mother. Whether or not they had remained at home, with the prospect of battle so near — it had devastated territory, to the west of the old manse — he had been unable to ascertain. Stuart was a sleepless, ever-ready fighter, who kept his men on the go ; but Milroy knew that pure