. Funny he
hadn't thought of it at once. He turned, seized one, mounted, and
galloped on. There was a quick halt. A panting mob came surging back
over the way they had just fled. A ford in front had been blocked, and
in the scramble the cry was raised that Stuart's cavalry were on them
and cutting every soul down in his tracks at the crossing.

John leaped from his horse, turned, and ran straight for the woods. He
didn't propose to be captured by Stuart's cavalry, that was sure. He
turned to look back and ran into a tree. He climbed it. If he could only
get to the top before they saw him. He had been an expert climber when a
boy in Missouri and he thanked God now for this. He never paused for
breath until he had reached the very top, where he drew the swaying
branches close about his body to hide from the coming foe. The sun was
yet hanging over the trees in the woods--a ball of sullen red fire
lighting up the hiding place of the last poor devil for the eyes of the
avenging hosts who were sweeping on. If it were night it would be all
right. But this was no place for a man with an ounce of sense in broad
daylight. The sharpshooters would see him in that tall tree sure. They
couldn't take him prisoner up there--they would shoot him like a
squirrel just to see him tumble and, by the Lord Harry, they would do
it, too!

He got down from the tree faster than he climbed up and from the edge of
the woods spied a dense swamp. He never stopped until he reached the
centre of it, and dropped flat on his stomach.

"Thank God, at last!" he sighed.

The Northern army fleeing for Washington had left on the field
twenty-eight guns, four thousand muskets, nine regimental flags, four
hundred and eighty-one dead, a thousand and eleven wounded and fourteen
hundred captured. The road to the rear was literally sown with pistols,
knapsacks, blankets, haversacks, wagons, tools and hospital stores.

And saddest of all the wreck, lay the bright new handcuffs with coils of
hang-man's rope scattered everywhere.

The Southern army had lost three hundred and eighty-seven killed,
including two brigadier generals, Bee and Barton, and fifteen hundred
wounded. They were so completely scattered and demoralized by their
marvellous and overwhelming victory that any systematic pursuit of their
foe was impossible.

The strange silent figure on the little sorrel horse turned his blue
eyes toward Washington from the last hilltop as darkness fell, lifted