sky--men and animals looking gigantic. At the same instant a
jingling and tramping were audible behind us, and turning in that
direction I saw a score of mounted men moving forward at a trot. In the
meantime the giants on the crest had multiplied surprisingly. Our invasion
of the Gulf States had apparently failed.

There was lively work in the next few seconds. The shots were thick and
fast--and uncommonly loud; none, I think, from our side. Cobb was on the
extreme left of our advance, I on the right--about two paces apart. He
instantly dived into the wood. The three men and I climbed across the
fence somehow and struck out across the field--actuated, doubtless, by an
intelligent forethought: men on horseback could not immediately follow.
Passing near the house, now swarming like a hive of bees, we made for a
swamp two or three hundred yards away, where I concealed myself in a
jungle, the others continuing--as a defeated commander would put it--to
fall back. In my cover, where I lay panting like a hare, I could hear a
deal of shouting and hard riding and an occasional shot. I heard some one
calling dogs, and the thought of bloodhounds added its fine suggestiveness
to the other fancies appropriate to the occasion.

Finding myself unpursued after the lapse of what seemed an hour, but was
probably a few minutes, I cautiously sought a place where, still
concealed, I could obtain a view of the field of glory. The only enemy in
sight was a group of horsemen on a hill a quarter of a mile away. Toward
this group a woman was running, followed by the eyes of everybody about
the house. I thought she had discovered my hiding-place and was going to
"give me away." Taking to my hands and knees I crept as rapidly as
possible among the clumps of brambles directly back toward the point in
the road where we had met the enemy and failed to make him ours. There I
dragged myself into a patch of briars within ten feet of the road, where I
lay undiscovered during the remainder of the day, listening to a variety
of disparaging remarks upon Yankee valor and to dispiriting declarations
of intention conditional on my capture, as members of the Opposition
passed and repassed and paused in the road to discuss the morning's
events. In this way I learned that the three privates had been headed off
and caught within ten minutes. Their destination would naturally be
Andersonville; what further became of them God knows. Their captors passed
the day maki