an does
ever let another man see what is in his heart?

* * * * *

All day long the line of armed men had gone spreading itself wider and
wider, to draw itself around the edges of the shorter line of men
hidden in the protecting fringe of the hills. All day long clearly and
more clearly Jeffrey Whiting had been seeing the inevitable end. His
line was already stretched almost to the breaking point. If the enemy
had known, there were dangerous gaps in it now through which a few
daring men might have pushed and have begun to divide up the strength
of the men with him.

All the afternoon as he watched he saw other and yet other groups and
troops of men come up the railroad, detrain and push out ever farther
upon the enveloping wings to east and west.

Twice during the afternoon the ends of his line had been driven in and
almost surrounded. They had decided in the beginning to leave their
horses in the rear, and so use them only at the last. But the
spreading line in front had become too long to be covered on foot by
the few men he had. They were forced to use the speed of the animals
to make a show of greater force than they really had. The horses
furnished marks that even the soldiers could occasionally hit. All the
afternoon long, and far into the night, the screams of terrified,
wounded horses rang horribly through the woods above the pattering
crackle of the irregular rifle fire. Old men who years before had
learned to sleep among such sounds lay down and fell asleep grumbling.
Young men and boys who had never heard such sounds turned sick with
horror or wandered frightened through the dark, nervously ready to
fire on any moving twig or scraping branch.

In the night Jeffrey Whiting went along the line, talking aside to
every man; telling them to slip quietly away through the dark. They
could make their way out through the loose lines of soldiers and
sheriffs' men and get down to the villages where they would be unknown
and where nobody would bother with them.

The inevitable few took his word-- There is always the inevitable few.
They slipped away one by one, each man telling himself a perfectly
good reason for going, several good reasons, in fact; any reason,
indeed, but that they were afraid. Most of them were gathered in by
the soldier pickets and sent down to jail.

Morning came, a grey, lowering morning with a grim, ugly suggestion in
it of the coming winter. Jeff