slashed at him with broadsword. The
blow went home, but the sword's end became entangled somehow with the
breast bones of the victim. A yager, thinking to deprive Peyton of the
sword, brought down a musket-butt heavily on it. But Peyton's grip was
firm, and the sword snapped in two, the hilt in his hand, the point in
its human sheath. At that instant Peyton felt a keen smart in his left
leg. It came from a second sabre blow aimed by the Hessian officer,
who might have followed it with a third, but that he was now attacked
elsewhere. Peyton had no sooner clapped his hand to his wounded leg
than he was stunned by a blow from the rifle-butt of the yager who had
previously struck the sword. Harry fell forward on the horse's neck,
which he grasped madly with both arms, still holding the broken sword
in his right hand; and lapsed from a full sense of the tumult, the
plunging and shrieking horses, the yelling and cursing men, the whirr
and clash of swords, and the thuds of rifle-blows, into blind, red,
aching, smarting half-consciousness.

When he was again aware of things, he was still clasping the horse's
neck, and was being borne alone he knew not whither. His head ached,
and his left leg was at every movement a seat of the sharpest pain. He
was dizzy, faint, bleeding,--and too weak to raise himself from his
position. He could not hear any noise of fighting, but that might have
been drowned by the singing in his ears. He tried to sit up and look
around, but the effort so increased his pain and so drew on his
nigh-fled strength, that he fell forward on the horse's neck,
exhausted and half-insensible. The horse, which had merely turned and
run from the conflict at the moment of Peyton's loss of sense,
galloped on.

Clouds had darkened the moon in time to prevent their captain's
unintentional defection from being seen by his troops. They had,
therefore, fought on against such antagonists as, in the darkness,
they could keep located. The moon reappeared, and showed many of the
Hessians making for the wooded hill near by, and some fleeing to the
force that had re-formed further on the road. Some of the Americans
charged this force, which thereupon fired a volley and fled, having
the more time therefor inasmuch as the charging dragoons did not this
time possess their former speed and impetus. The dragoons, in disorder
and without a leader, came to a halt. Becoming aware of Peyton's
absence, they sought in vain the scene of rece