.

It was in the narrow neck of a valley, pent up between rocky shelving
ridges, anywhere you will between Maryland and Georgia--for he who did
this thing would not care to have it too particularly drawn out from the
million other deeds of "derring-do" that the mighty story of the Great
War has known and buried. Eight hundred Confederate Horse, some of
Stuart's Cavalry, had got driven and trapped and caged up in this
miserable defile, misled and intercepted; with the dense mass of a
Federal army marching on their rear, within them by bare fifteen miles,
and the forward route through the crammed defile between the hills, by
which alone they could regain Lee's forces, dammed up by a deep, rapid,
though not broad river; by a bridge strongly fortified and barricaded;
and, on the opposite bank, by some Federal corps a couple of thousand
strong, well under cover in rifle-pits and earthworks, thrown up by keen
woodsmen and untiring trench-diggers. It was close peril, deadly as any
that Secessia had seen, here in the hot still midnight, with the columns
of the Federal divisions within them by eight hours' march, stretching
out and taking in all the land to the rear in the sweep of their
semicircular wings; while in front rose, black and shapeless in the deep
gloom of the rocks above, the barricades upon the bridge, behind which
two thousand rifles were ready to open fire at the first alarm from the
Federal guard. And alone, without the possibility of aid, caged in among
the trampled corn and maize that filled the valley, imprisoned between
the two Federal forces as in the iron jaws of a trap, the handful of
Southern troopers stood, resolute to sell their lives singly one by one,
and at a costly price, and perish to a man, rather than fall alive into
the hands of their foes.

When the morning broke they would be cut to pieces, as the chaff is cut
by the whirl of the steam-wheels. They knew that. Well, they looked at
it steadily; it had no terrors for them, the Cavaliers of Old Virginia,
so that they died with their face to the front. There was but one chance
left for escape; aid there could be none; and that chance was so
desperate, that even to them--reckless in daring, living habitually
between life and death, and ever careless of the issue--it looked like
madness to attempt it. But one among them had urged it on their
consideration--urged it with passionate entreaty, pledging his own life
for its success; and they had given