their adhesion to it, for his name
was famous through the Confederacy.

He had won his spurs at Manasses, at Antietam, at Chancellorsville; he
had been in every headlong charge with Stuart; he had been renowned for
the most dashing Border raids and conspicuous staff service of any
soldier in Secessia; he had galloped through a tempest of the enemy's
balls, and swept along their lines to reconnoitre, riding back through
the storm of shot to Lee, as coolly as though he rode through a summer
shower at a review; and his words had weight with men who would have
gone after him to the death. He stood now, the only man dismounted, in
true Virginia uniform; a rough riding-coat, crossed by an undressed
chamois belt, into which his sabre and a brace of revolvers were thrust,
a broad Spanish sombrero shading his face, great Hessians reaching above
his knee, and a long silken golden-colored beard sweeping to his
waist,--a keen reconnoitrer, a daring raider, a superb horseman, and a
soldier heart and soul.

When he had laid before them the solitary chance of the perilous
enterprise that he had planned, each man of the eight hundred had sought
the post of danger for himself; but there he was, inexorable--what he
had proposed he alone would execute. The Federals were ignorant of their
close vicinity, for their near approach had been unheard, the trodden
maize and rice, and the angry foaming of the torrent above, deadening
the sound of their horses' hoofs; and the Union-men, satisfied that the
"rebels" were entrapped beyond escape, were sleeping securely behind
their earth-works, the passage of the river blockaded by their
barricade, while the Southerners were drawn up close to the head of the
bridge in sections of threes, screened by the intense shadow of the
overhanging rocks; shadow darker from the brilliance of the full summer
moon that, shining on the enemy's encampment, and on the black boiling
waters thundering through the ravine, was shut out from the defile by
the leaning pine-covered walls of granite. It was terribly still, that
awful silence, only filled with the splashing of the water and the
audible beat of the Federal sentinel's measured tramp, as they were
drawn up there by the bridge-head; and though they had cast themselves
into the desperate effort with the recklessness of men for whom death
waited surely on the morrow, it looked a madman's thought, a madman's
exploit, to them, as their leader laid aside his sword and