, showed how nearly the matter touched his tense nerves.

"Some folks in the upper e-end of the Cove 'lowed afterward they hearn
a hawn; some folks spoke of a shakin' of the ground like the trompin'
of horses--but them troops mus' hev passed from the foot o' the mounting
acrost the aidge of the Cove."

"Scant haffen mile," put in the blacksmith, "down to a sort of cave,
or tunnel, that runs under the mounting--yander--that lets 'em out into
Greenbrier Cove."

"Gawd!" exclaimed the guerilla, striking his breast with his clenched,
gauntleted hand as his eyes followed with the vivacity of actual sight
the course of the march of the squadron of horse to the point of
their triumphant vanishment. Despite the vehemence of the phrase the
intonation was a very bleat of desperation. For it was a rich and
rare opportunity thus wrested from him by an untoward fate. In all
the chaotic chances of the Civil War he could hardly hope for its
repetition. It was part of a crack body of regulars--Tolhurst's
squadron--that he had contrived to drive into this trap, this
_cul-de-sac_, surrounded by the infinite fastnesses of the Great Smoky
Mountains. It had been a running fight, for Tolhurst had orders, as
Ackert had found means of knowing, to join the main body without delay,
and his chief aim was to shake off this persistent pursuit with which
a far inferior force had harassed his march. But for his fortuitous
discovery of the underground exit from the basin of Tanglefoot Cove,
Ackert, ambushed without, would have encountered and defeated the
regulars in detail as they clambered in detachments up the unaccustomed
steeps of the mountain road, the woods elsewhere being almost impassable
jungles of laurel.

Success would have meant more to Ackert than the value of the service to
the cause, than the tumultuous afflatus of victory, than the spirit of
strife to the born soldier. There had been kindled in his heart a great
and fiery ambition; he was one of the examples of an untaught military
genius of which the Civil War elicited a few notable and amazing
instances. There had been naught in his career heretofore to suggest
this unaccountable gift, to foster its development. He was the son of
a small farmer, only moderately well-to-do; he had the very limited
education which a restricted and remote rural region afforded its youth;
he had entered the Confederate army as a private soldier, with no sense
of special fitness, no expectation of per