ow'd you was a gentleman, sar! Massar, is your family from ole
Virginny?"

It was five o'clock when I rejoined S., and the greater part of our
journey had yet to be made. I went at his creeping pace until courtesy
yielded to impatience, when spurring my Pegasus vigorously, he fell into
a bouncing amble and left the _attache_ far behind. My pass was again
demanded above Langley's by a man who ate apples as he examined it, and
who was disposed to hold a long parley. I entered a region of scrub
timber further on, and met with nothing human for four miles, at the end
of which distance I reached Difficult Creek, flowing through a rocky
ravine, and crossed by a military bridge of logs. Through the thick
woods to the right, I heard the roar of the Potomac, and a finger-board
indicated that I was opposite Great Falls. Three or four dead horses lay
at the roadside beyond the stream, and I recalled the place as the scene
of a recent cavalry encounter. A cartridge-box and a torn felt hat lay
close to the carcasses: I knew that some soul had gone hence to its
account.

The road now kept to the left obliquely, and much of my ride was made
musical by the stream. Darkness closed solemnly about me, with seven
miles of the journey yet to accomplish, and as, at eight o'clock, I
turned from the turnpike into a lonesome by-road, full of ruts, pools,
and quicksands, a feeling of delicious uneasiness for the first time
possessed me. Some owls hooted in the depth of the woods, and wild pigs,
darting across the road, went crashing into the bushes. The
phosphorescent bark of a blasted tree glimmered on a neighboring knoll,
and as I halted at a rivulet to water my beast, I saw a solitary star
floating down the ripples. Directly I came upon a clearing where the
moonlight shone through the rents of a crumbling dwelling, and from the
far distance broke the faint howl of farm dogs. A sense of insecurity
that I would not for worlds have resigned, now tingled, now chilled my
blood. At last, climbing a stony hill, the skies lay beneath me
reddening with the flame of camps and flaring and falling alternately,
like the beautiful Northern lights. I heard the ring of hoofs as I
looked entranced, and in a twinkling, a body of horsemen dashed past me
and disappeared. A little beyond, the road grew so thick that I could
see nothing of my way; but trusting doubtfully to my horse, a deep
challenge came directly from the thicket, and I saw the flash of a
sabre