orse Shoe's first habit in the
morning was to look after Captain Peter, and he accordingly directed his
steps towards the rude shed which served as a stable, at the foot of the
hill. Here, to his surprise, he discovered that the fence-rails which,
the night before, had been set up as a barrier across the vacant
doorway, had been let down, and that no horses were to be seen about the
premises.

"What hocus-pocus has been here?" said he to himself, as he gazed upon
the deserted stable. "Have these rummaging and thieving Tories been out
maraudering in the night? or is it only one of Captain Peter's
old-sodger tricks, letting down bars and leading the young geldings into
mischief? That beast can snuff the scent of a corn field or a pasture
ground as far as a crow smells gunpowder. He'd dislocate and corruptify
any innocent stable of horses in Carolina!"

In doubt to which of these causes to assign this disappearance of their
cavalry, the sergeant ascended the hill hard-by, and directed his eye
over the neighboring fields, hoping to discover the deserters in some of
the adjacent pastures. But he could get no sight of them. He then
returned to the stable and fell to examining the ground about the door,
in order to learn something of the departure of the animals by their
tracks. These were sufficiently distinct to convince him that Captain
Peter, whose shoes had a peculiar mark well known to the sergeant, had
eloped during the night, in company with the major's gelding and two
others, these being all, as Horse Shoe had observed, that were in the
stable at the time he had retired to bed. He forthwith followed the
foot-prints which led him into the high road, and thence along it
westward for about two hundred paces, where a set of field bars, now
thrown down, afforded entrance into the cornfield. At this point the
sergeant traced the deviation of three of the horses into the field,
whilst the fourth, it was evident, had continued upon the road.

The conclusion which Galbraith drew from this phenomenon was expressed
by a wise shake of the head and a profound fit of abstraction. He took
his seat upon a projecting rail at the angle of the fence, and began to
sum up conjectures in the following phrase:

"The horse that travelled along that road, never travelled of his own
free will: that's as clear as preaching. Well, he wa'n't rode by Wat nor
by Mike Lynch, or else they are arlier men than I take them to be: but
still, I'll tak