grimly, and
called aloud--

"Come on, Major! Dis vay! Dere are a squad of dem ahead!"

The bugle at once sounded a charge, the Major rose in the stirrups, and
thundered "Forward!" I reined aside, intuitively, and the column dashed
hotly past me. With a glance at the heap of mortality littering the way,
I spurred my nag sharply, and followed hard behind. The riderless horse
seemed to catch the fever of the moment, and closed up with me, leaving
his master the solitary tenant of the dell. For perhaps three miles we
galloped like the wind, and my brave little traveller overtook the
hindmost of the troop, and retained the position. Thrice there were
discharges ahead; I caught glimpses of the Major, the Captain, and the
wolfish sergeant, far in the advance; and once saw, through the cloud of
dust that beset them, the pursued and their individual pursuers, turning
the top of a hill. But for the most part, I saw nothing; I _felt_ all
the intense, consuming, burning ardor of the time and the event. I
thought that my hand clutched a sabre, and despised myself that it was
not there. I stood in the stirrups, and held some invisible enemy by the
throat. In a word, the bloodiness of the chase was upon me. I realized
the fierce infatuation of matching life with life, and standing arbiter
upon my fellow's body and soul. It seemed but a moment, when we halted,
red and panting, in the paltry Court House village of Hanover; the
field-pieces hurled a few shells at the escaping Confederates, and the
men were ordered to dismount.

It seemed that a Confederate picket had been occupying the village, and
the creek memorized by the skirmish was an outpost merely. Two of the
man Otto's party had been slain in the woods, where also lay as many
Southerners.

Hanover Court House is renowned as the birthplace of Patrick Henry, the
colonial orator, called by Byron the "forest Demosthenes." In a little
tavern, opposite the old Court House building, he began his humble
career as a measurer of gills to convivials, and in the Court House,--a
small stone edifice, plainly but quaintly constructed,--he gave the
first exhibitions of his matchless eloquence. Not far away, on a
by-road, the more modern but not less famous orator, Henry Clay, was
born. The region adjacent to his father's was called the "Slashes of
Hanover," and thence came his appellation of the "Mill Boy of the
Slashes." I had often longed to visit these shrines; but never dreamed
that t