ar."

"I have; the toughest time I ever had in my life, and I have seen some
deep mud before," replied Lieutenant Sterling. "Without your timely
aid, my command would all have been prisoners, and the wagons been in
possession of the enemy. But I am bewildered at the manner in which you
have done this thing. I did not see your force till you marched out on
the meadow. I heard a number of rifle-cracks, as I judged they were,
but I did not see a man."

"It was wholly done by a volunteer company of riflemen, attached to my
platoon for this occasion."

"I saw the enemy fall when they started to march over here, and after
they took to the stream; but I could not make out the force that fired
the shots. There must have been a hundred of them."

"Only thirty of them; but I believe they did not waste a shot," replied
Deck. "Will you oblige me by giving me the date of your commission?"

"Whatever the date of my commission, I shall cheerfully resign the
command to you; for you have a larger force than mine, and you have
fought the battle here that saved me, though you must have been
outnumbered by the enemy. My commission bears date Dec. 27."

"I was commissioned two weeks earlier than that."

"Then you rank me, and I am very glad that it is so," answered
Lieutenant Sterling; and he proceeded to inform his command of the
fact, for all of them had been ordered to suspend work.

"Do you happen to know what any of your wagons contain?" asked Deck,
who was ready to address himself to the task of moving the wagons to
the forest road.

"They are loaded for the most part with rations for the troops, and
grain for the horses and mules, with some general supplies."

"Do you know if there is any rope among the supplies?"

"The quartermaster-sergeant can answer that question better than I
can," replied the officer.

"Plenty of it, Lieutenant," replied this man. "It is in the first wagon
in the line."

"Bring out at least a hundred feet of inch-rope," added Deck. "You were
not moving the wagons to the nearest hard ground."

"My aim was to get them to a road indicated on the map over in that
direction," replied Lieutenant Sterling, pointing over towards the one
by which the Riverlawns had come from Jamestown. "According to the
scale on my map it is about two miles over there."

"That is very true; but, according to the fact, it is less than a third
of a mile to the woods where we came upon the meadow."

"But it would take m