midnight
With Margaret he talked once , and straightway the question was dropped like a living coal . So , Chad withdrew from his fellows . The social life of the town , gayer than ever now , knew him no more . He kept up his college work , but when he was not at his books , he walked the fields , and many a moonlit midnight found him striding along a white turnpike , or sitting motionless on top of a fence along the border of some woodland , his chin in both hands , fighting his fight out in the cool stillness alone . He himself little knew the unmeant significance there was in the old Continental uniform he had worn to the dance . Even his old rifle , had he but known it , had been carried with Daniel Morgan from Virginia to Washington 's aid in Cambridge . His earliest memories of war were rooted in thrilling stories of King 's Mountain .