at the officer was General Philip St. George Cooke, and that the
chances were that the regiments of the reserve were going into
action pretty soon.

About 3 o'clock the next morning boots and saddles sounded from the
head-quarters of the Cavalry Reserve brigade and the 5th and 6th
United States Cavalry, followed by Colonel Rush's Lancers, rode out
of their camp grounds and were presently followed by the 1st United
States and a squadron of Pennsylvania carbineers.

The troopers of the 8th Lancers watched them ride away in the dawn;
but mo orders came to follow them, and, discontented, muttering,
they went sullenly about their duties, wondering why they, also,
had not been called on.

That nobody had caught the great Confederate cavalryman did not
console them; they had to listen to the jeers of the infantry,
blaming them for Stuart's great raid around the entire Union army;
in sickening reiteration came the question: "Who ever saw a dead
cavalryman?" And, besides, one morning in a road near camp, some
of the 8th Lancers heard comments from a group of general officers
which were not at all flattering to their own cavalry.

"You see," said a burly colonel of engineers, "that this army
doesn't know what real cavalry looks like--except when it gets a
glimpse of Jeb Stuart's command."

An infantry colonel coincided with him, profanely:

"That damned rebel cavalry chases ours with a regularity and
persistence that makes me ill. Did the world ever see the like of
it? You send out one of our mounted regiments to look for a
mounted rebel regiment, and the moment it finds what it's lookin'
for the rebs give a pleased sort of yell, and ours turn tail.
Because it's become a habit: that's why our cavalry runs! And then
the fun begins! Lord God Almighty! what's the matter with our
cavalry?"

"You can't make cavalry in a few months," observed a colonel of
heavy artillery, stretching his fat, scarlet-striped legs in his
stirrups. "What do you expect? Every man, woman, and child south
of Mason and Dixon's Line knows how to ride. The Southerners are
born horsemen. We in the North are not. That's the difference.
We've got to learn to be. Take a raw soldier and send him forth
mounted on an animal with which he has only a most formal
acquaintance, and his terrors are increased twofold. When you give
him a sabre, pistol, and carbine, to take care of when he has all
he can do to take care of himself, those terrors increas