team
vessels, and I almost cry for joy, and at the turning of the road my
horse rears and almost throws me to the ground, and I see the black
horse lying dead, and I spur my horse to pass, and give a cry of terror
as a man springs from the left, with carbine presented, and shouts,
"Your horse! your horse! Dismount at once, or I'll blow your
brains out!"

For the rider of the black horse was a Confederate!

Shall I ever forget that moment of dismay and anguish? Even as I write
the thrill of horror returns, and I see a picture of the past:--the
daybreak; a lonely road in the forest; two men and two horses, each pair
as unlike as life and death, for one's horse was dead and the other man
was about to die. Had I been so utterly foolish! Why had I conceived
absolutely that this rider was a Federal? How could a Federal know the
road so well that he had gone over it at full speed, never hesitating,
never deflecting into a wrong course? The instant before, I had been in
heaven, for I had known my safe destination was at hand; now, I felt
that my end had come to me, for my terror was for myself and not for a
lost mission, and I cannot remember that in that smallest second of time
any other hope was in me but that of riding this man down and reaching
our troops with a mortal bullet in my body.

In a second the world may be changed--in a second the world _was_
changed. I saw my captor's gun drop from his hands; I saw his hands go
up. I looked round; in the road behind me--blessed sight--were two
Union soldiers with their muskets levelled at the man in gray.

"Take me at once to General Franklin."

Again I was thunderstruck--two voices had shouted the same words!

The revulsion turned me stomach-sick; the rider of the black horse was a
Federal in disguise!

* * * * *

General Franklin advanced, and met the enemy advancing. For no error on
my part, my mission was a failure.

"How could you know the road so well for the last ten miles of it?" I
asked of Jones, the rider of the black horse.

"That horse was going home!"

"A horse captured from the rebels?"

"No; impressed only yesterday from a farmer near the landing. You see he
had already made that road and was not in the best condition to make it
again so soon; then I had to turn about more than once. I suppose that
horse must have made nearly a hundred miles in twenty-four hours."

Jones was of Porter's escort, and had on this occasio