the man that excited his suspicion, and as
soon as the fellow was gone he sought a hiding-place from which he could
watch his return. The man was gone much longer than appeared necessary.
At length he came back alone and reported that the track was clear,
there being no Yankees near the ferry.

Paying and dismissing the guide, without showing his suspicions, Fontain
took good care not to obey his directions, but selected his course so as
to approach the river at a point above the ferry. By doing so he escaped
a squad of soldiers that seemed posted to intercept him, for as he
entered the road near the river bank a sentinel rose not more than ten
feet away and bade him to halt. He seemed to form the right flank of a
line of sentinels posted to command the ferry.

It was a time for quick and decisive action. Fontain had approached,
pistol in hand, and as the man hailed he felled him with a bullet, then
wheeled his horse and set out at full gallop up the stream. A shower of
balls followed him, one of them striking his right hand and wounding all
four of its fingers. Another grazed his right leg and a third cut a hole
through his sword scabbard. The horse fared worse, for no fewer than
seven bullets struck it. Keeling from its wounds it still had strength
to bear up for a mile, when it fell and died.

He had outridden his foes, who were all on foot, and, dividing his arms
and clothes into two packages, he trusted himself to the waters of the
Big Black, which he swam in safety. On the other side he was in friendly
territory, and did not walk far before he came to the house of a
patriotic Southern woman, who loaned him the only horse she had. It was
a stray one which had come to her place after the Yankee foragers had
carried off all the horses she owned.

Fontain was now in a safe region. His borrowed horse carried him to
Raymond by two o'clock the next morning, and was here changed for a
fresh one, which enabled him to reach Jackson during the forenoon. Here
he delivered his despatch to General Johnston, having successfully
performed a feat which, in view of its difficulties and his physical
disability, may well be classed as phenomenal.

_GORDON AND THE BAYONET CHARGE AT ANTIETAM._

In the opening chapter of General John B. Gordon's interesting
"Reminiscences of the Civil War" he tells us that the bayonet, so far as
he knew, was very rarely used in that war, and never effectively. The
bayonet, the lineal desce