but augur
ill for our chances of traversing a wider and wilder stream. But it was
too early then to think of desponding, so casting forebodings behind, I
drove up to our rallying place, rattling over four long leagues under
seventy minutes. The black ponies tossed their heads, and champed their
bits, gayly, as they made best time over the last mile.

I found that the party that purposed actually to cross the Potomac was,
from one cause or another, reduced to four, including myself and my
attendant. A cousin of Symonds', hight Walter, with the same
surname--there is a perfect clan of them in those parts--was to
accompany us only to our first resting-place, a farm-house about
eighteen miles off. Our proposed companions were both Maryland men; one
had already served for some months in a regiment of Confederate cavalry,
and was returning to his duty, after one of those furloughs--often
self-granted--in which the Borderers are prone to indulge; the other was
a mere youth, and had never seen a shot fired; but a more enthusiastic
recruit could hardly be conceived.

Twilight had melted into darkness long before the rest of the party
arrived; then an hour or more was consumed in the last preparations and
refreshments. It was fully nine o'clock on the night of February 21st,
when we started from Symonds' door, strengthened for the journey with a
warm stirrup-cup, and warmer kind wishes from the family, including two
_very_ "sympathizing" damsels, who had come in from neighboring
homesteads to bid the Southward-bound good speed.

Before we had ridden a mile, the Marylanders turned off to a house where
they were to take up some letters, promising to rejoin us before we had
gone a league. But we traversed more than that distance, at the slowest
foot-pace, without being overtaken, and at length determined to wait for
the laggards, drawing back about thirty paces off the path, into a glade
where there was partial shelter from the icy wind that swept past, laden
with coming snow. There we tarried for a long half-hour (told on my
watch by a fusee-light), and still no signs of our companions. Symonds
(the cousin), who abode with us still, began to mutter doubts, and the
Alabama man to grumble curses (he had ever a fatal facility in
blasphemy), and I own to having entertained divers disagreeable
misgivings, though I carefully avoided expressing them. At last our
guide thought it best that we should make our way to a lonely
farm-house,