to be twenty or thereabouts. The wind had
shifted--another good reason for keeping on our side of the road--and
blew from them to us; but our horses were well trained. The troop
drew level with our hiding; we could hear the jingling of their bits,
and with that came our signal. A couple of pistol shots rang out;
they made every man of us start in his saddle, and they were followed
by a volley.

In my surprise I had dug spur and pushed out beyond our clump of
firs, almost before it struck me that the sound came not from the
valley but from ahead of us, across the road and some way up the
slope. My first motion had been to charge the troopers in the
roadway, to drive them (or at least to check them) from helping at
the bridge; and I had done more wisely by holding to it, even upon
second thought, for they had wheeled towards the sound and so gave
their backs to us. While they stood thus we might have charged
through them, and all had been well.

As it was, they offered us this chance for a moment only; and then,
striking spur, scrambled up the bank on the far side of the road and
headed across the turf at a gallop. We looked, and slowly we
understood. For half a mile away, up the rise of the downs, a broad
dark shadow was moving; and we had scarcely discerned it before, in
the pale of the dawn, small points of light wavered and broke upon
morions, gorgets, cuirasses. That moving shadow was our own main
body, climbing the hill at a gentle trot.

A few picketers hung on their rear. It was these, of course, that
had given the alarm: and by-and-by the trumpets taking it up on Five
Barrow Hill, a body of four hundred horse came over the rise at a
gallop and bore down obliquely on the mass--very confidently at
first: but at closer quarters it lost heart and started off to harass
the right flank of the solid mass, that paid it little attention and
held on its way without swerving.

Before this we had put our horses in motion, to overtake the patrol
(as I will call it) and break through to join our comrades. But here
it was that our delay proved fatal. For turning at the sound of our
gallop, and belike judging us to be the advance-guard of a second
large body of horse, the leader of the patrol wheeled his men about,
halted them for a moment, and so charged them straight down upon us.
In numbers they were more than two to one, with the advantage of the
slope, and albeit we fought fiercely for a minute, they broke u