.
A bullet whistled so near his face that it almost took away his breath.
An elderly farmer standing in his own door had fired it, and Harry
snatched one of the pistols from his own belt, remembering then with rage
that it could not be fired. He shouted to his horse and made him run
faster.

A bullet struck the pommel of his saddle and glanced off. A boy in an
orchard had fired it. A load of bird-shot, a handful it seemed to Harry,
flew about his ears. A bent old man who ought to have been sitting on
a porch in a rocking chair had discharged it from the edge of a wood.
A squirrel hunter on a hill took a pot shot at him and missed.

Harry was furious with anger. Decidedly this was no place for a visitor
from the South. He did not detect the faintest sign of hospitality.
Men and women alike seemed to dislike him. A powerful virago hurled a
stone at his head, which would have struck him senseless had it not
missed, and a farmer standing by a fence had a shotgun cocked and ready
to be fired as he passed, but Harry, snatching one of the useless pistols
from his belt, hurled it at him with all his might. It struck the man a
glancing blow on the head, felling him as if he had been shot, and then
Harry, thinking quickly, acted with equal quickness.

He reined in his horse with such suddenness that he nearly shot from the
saddle. Then he leaped down, seized the shotgun from under the hands of
the fallen man, sprang on his horse and was away again, sending back a
cry of defiance.

Harry had never before in his life been so furious. To be hunted thus by
a whole countryside, as if he were a mad dog, was intolerable. It was
not only a threat to one's life, it was also an insult to one's dignity
to be treated as an animal. Although he was armed now the insult
continued. The call of the trumpet sounded almost without ceasing,
and the Union troopers uttered many shouts as do those who chase the fox,
although Harry knew that their cries were intended to rouse the farmers
who might head him off.

The chase grew hotter, but he felt better with the shotgun. It was a
fine double-barreled weapon of the latest make, and he hoped that it was
loaded with buckshot. He was a sharpshooter, and he could give a good
account of any one who came too near.

Yet with the trumpet shrilling continually behind him the huntsmen
gathered fast on either flank. It was yet the day when nearly every
house in America, outside a town, contai