ing his panting horse. The major has by this time turned out,
and in boots and overcoat is striding over to the stone wall to get the
news.

"What is it, Win?" he asks.

And the aide-de-camp, bending low from the saddle and with grave face,
replies,

"Stuart again, by Heaven! He whipped around our right, somewhere near
Martinsburg, last night, and is crossing at Williamsport now."

"_What!_ Why, we've got three corps over there about Antietam yet."

"Yes; and he'll go around them, just as he did round us, and be up in
Pennsylvania to-morrow. Where are your wounded?"

"Some over near Keedysville; the others, those we lost at South
Mountain, somewhere near Frederick. The colonel and Abbot were there at
last accounts. Why?"

"Because it will be just like him to go clean around us and come down
the Monocacy. If he should, they are gone, sure."

IV.

Two days after the excitement in Frederick consequent upon the escape of
the supposed spy Colonel Putnam was chatting with the provost-marshal
and the landlord of the tavern where Doctor Warren had paid his brief
visit. They were discussing a piece of news that had come in during the
morning. From the very first the proprietor of the old tavern had
scoffed at the theory of there being anything of a Southern spy about
the mysterious stranger. He was a Southern man himself, and, though
hardly an enemy to the Union, he had that personal sympathy for a host
of neighbors and friends which gave him something of a leaning that way.
He did not believe, he openly said, that anything on earth could whip
the South so long as they kept on their own soil; but things looked
black for their cause when they crossed the Potomac. Maryland had not
risen in tumultuous welcome as Lee hopefully expected. The worn, ragged,
half-* starved soldiers that had marched up the valley in mid-September
had little of the heroic in their appearance, despite the fame of their
exploits; and in their hunger and thirst they had made way,
soldier-fashion, with provender for which they could not pay. The host
himself had suffered not a little from their forays, and while his
sentiments were broadly Southern his business instincts were
emphatically on the side of the greenbacks of the North. He had found
the Union officers men of means, if not of such picturesquely martial
attributes as their Southern opponents; and while he would not deny his
friendship for many a gallant fellow in the rebel gray, n