ed:

"It's only a horse!"

In a few moments the great gray of fallen Corporal Crowfoot overtook
us, went ahead, and slacked speed by the lieutenant.

"Good! He'll be fresh when the rest go down!" shouted Miller. "Let the
last man mount the gray!"

By this time we had begun to think ourselves clear of the enemy, and
doomed to race on till the horses should fall.

Suddenly the hoofs of Crowfoot's gray and the lieutenant's bay
thundered upon a plank road whose hollow noise, when we all reached
it, should have been heard far. It took us through wide orchard lands
into a low-lying mist by the banks of a great marsh, till we passed
through that fog, strode heavily up a slope, and saw the shimmer of
roofs under the moon. Straight, through the main street we pounded
along.

Whether it was wholly deserted I know not, but not a human being was
in the streets, nor any face visible at the black windows. Not even a
dog barked. I noticed no living thing except some turkeys roosting on
a fence, and a white cat that sprang upon the pillar of a gateway and
thence to a tree.

Some of the houses seemed to have been ruined by a cannonade. I
suppose it was one of the places almost destroyed in Willoughby's
recent raid. Here we thundered, expecting ambush and conflict every
moment, while the loneliness of the street imposed on me such a sense
as might come of galloping through a long cemetery of the dead.

Out of the village we went off the planks again upon sand. I began to
suspect that I was losing a good deal of blood. My brain was on fire
with whirling thoughts and wonder where all was to end. Out of this
daze I came, in amazement to find that we were quickly overtaking our
lieutenant's thoroughbred.

Had he been hit in the fray, and bled to weakness? I only know that,
still galloping while we gained, the famous horse lurched forward,
almost turned a somersault, and fell on his rider.

"Stop--the paper!" shouted Bader.

We drew rein, turned, dismounted, and found Miller's left leg under
the big bay's shoulder. The horse was quite dead, the rider's long
hair lay on the sand, his face was white under the moon!

We stopped long enough to extricate him, and he came to his senses
just as we made out that his left leg was broken.

"Forward!" he groaned. "What in thunder are you stopped for? Oh, the
despatch! Here! away you go! Good-bye."

In attending to Miller we had forgotten the rider who had been long
gradually dropping