lonel Giltner to destroy the stores, and provide for the
remounting upon the captured horses of a portion of the dismounted men,
General Morgan marched immediately for Lexington with the second
brigade. Burbridge making a wonderful march--moving nearly ninety miles
in the last thirty hours--reached Mt. Sterling before daybreak on the
9th. Then occurred a great disaster to General Morgan's plans and it
fell upon the brave boys who had so patiently endured, on foot, the
long, painful march. Some of these men had marched from Hyter's Gap in
Virginia, to Mt. Sterling, a distance of two hundred and thirty miles in
ten days. Their shoes were worn to tatters and their feet raw and
bleeding, yet on the last day they pressed on twenty-seven miles.
Encamping not far from the town but to the east of it, Colonel Martin
directed Lieutenant Colonel Brent, who had been left with him in command
of some forty or fifty men to act as rear-guard, to establish his guard
at least one mile from the encampment and picket the road whence the
danger might come. Lieutenant Colonel Brent had been assigned to General
Morgan's command a short time previously to this expedition and was not
one of his old officers. Information which had been received a day or
two before had induced the belief that Burbridge was not near. Scouts
sent by General Morgan to observe his movements had returned, reporting
that he had moved on toward Virginia. This information convinced General
Morgan that he would not arrive at Mt. Sterling for two or three days
after the 8th--although satisfied that he would come.

Colonel Giltner's command was encamped some distance from Martin's and
upon a different road, and was not in a position to afford the latter
any protection. Brent, neglecting the precaution enjoined by Martin,
posted his guard only one or two hundred yards from the encampment of
the dismounted men and extended his pickets but a short distance
further.

On the next morning, about three o'clock, the enemy dashed into the
camp, the pickets giving no warning, and shot and rode over the men as
they lay around their fires. Many were killed before they arose from
their blankets. Notwithstanding the disadvantage of the surprise, the
men stood to their arms and fighting resolutely, although without
concert, soon drove the assailants out of the camp. Being then formed by
their officers, they presented a formidable front to the enemy who
returned, in greater strength as fr