behind. Now as we galloped away,--Bader, Absalom
Gray, myself, and Crowfoot's riderless horse,--I looked behind for
that comrade; but he was not to be seen or heard. We three were left
of the eleven.

From the loss of so many comrades the importance of our mission seemed
huge. With the speed, the noise, the deaths, the strangeness of the
gallop through that forsaken village, the wonder how all would end,
the increasing belief that thousands of lives depended on our success,
and the longing to win, my brain was wild. A raging desire to be first
held me, and I galloped as if in a dream.

Bader led; the riderless gray thundered beside him; Absalom rode
stirrup to stirrup with me. He was a veteran of the whole war. Where
it was that his sorrel rolled over I do not remember at all, though I
perfectly remember how Absalom sprang up, staggered, shouted, "My
foot is sprained!" and fell as I turned to look at him and went racing
on.

Then I heard above the sound of our hoofs the voice of the veteran of
the war. Down as he was, his spirit was unbroken. In the favorite song
of the army his voice rose clear and gay and piercing:--

"Hurrah for the Union!
Hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Shouting the battle-cry of freedom!"

We turned our heads and cheered him as we flew, for there was
something indescribably inspiriting in the gallant and cheerful lilt
of the fallen man. It was as if he flung us, from the grief of utter
defeat, a soul unconquerable; and I felt the life in me strengthened
by the tone.

Old Bader and I for it! He led by a hundred yards, and Crowfoot's gray
kept his stride. Was I gaining on them? How was it that I could see
his figure outlined more clearly against the horizon? Surely dawn was
not coming on!

No; I looked round on a world of naked peach-orchards, and corn-fields
ragged with last year's stalks, all dimly lit by a moon that showed
far from midnight; and that faint light on the horizon was not in the
east, but in the west. The truth flashed on me,--I was looking at such
an illumination of the sky as would be caused by the camp-fires of an
army.

"The missing brigade!" I shouted.

"Or a Southern division!" Bader cried. "Come on!"

"Come on!" I was certainly gaining on him, but very slowly. Before the
nose of my bay was beyond the tail of his roan, the wide illuminations
had become more distinct; and still not a vidette, not a picket, not a
sound of the proximity of an army.

Bader and I now rode side