ing
the others. If he had looked in my direction, he would have seen me; but
he passed on with his head straight to the front. I supposed that this
last man was on duty as the rear of the squad.

Now I tore up my pass into little bits and tossed them away. The party
of cavalry which, had passed me, I believed, were our patrol, and that I
should find no more of our men; so I was now extremely cautious in going
forward, not knowing how soon I might run against some scouting party of
the rebels.

The road soon diverged far from the shore; the ground was sandy and
mostly level; and in many places covered with, a thick, small growth.
The imperfect light gave me no extended vision, but from studying the
map before I had set out I had some idea of the general character of the
country at my right, as well as a pretty accurate notion of the distance
I must make before I should come near to the first rebel post; though,
of course, I could not know that such post had not been abandoned, or
advanced even, within the last few hours.

I went on, then, keeping a sharp lookout to right and left and straight
ahead, and every now and then stopping to listen. My senses were alert;
I thought of nothing but my present purposes; I felt that I was alone
and dependent upon myself, but the feeling was not greatly oppressive.

Having gone some four or five miles, I saw before me a fence running at
a right angle to the road I was on; this fence was not continued to the
left of my road, so I supposed that at this fence was the junction of
the road to Little Bethel, and as I had clearly seen before I started
that at this junction there was danger of finding a rebel outpost, or of
falling upon a rebel scouting party, I now became still more cautious,
moving along half bent on the edge of the road, and at last creeping on
my hands and knees until I reached the junction.

There was nobody in sight. I looked long up the road toward Little
Bethel; I went a hundred yards or so up this road, found nothing, and
returned to the junction; then continued up the road toward Young's
Mill. The ground here I knew must be visited frequently by the rebels,
and my attention became so fixed that I started at the slightest noise.
The sand's crunching under my feet sounded like the puffing of a
locomotive. The wind made a slight rippling with the ends of the tie on
my hat-band, I cut the ends off, to be relieved of the distraction.

I was going at the rate of a m