In their excitement they took a way farther from the river than that by which they had come. The woods were open, and there were small spaces covered with coarse grass on the little streams. As they ran along down a hill approaching one of these, they heard a sound of trampling coming towards them which brought them to a sudden stand-still with their hearts in their mouths. It must be the enemy. They were coming at full gallop. What a crashing they made coming on! They did not have time to run, and Jack immediately cocked his old musket and resolved at least to fight. Just then there galloped up to him, and almost over him, a magnificent bay horse without saddle or bridle. At sight of Jack he swerved and gave a loud snort of alarm, and then, with his head high in the air, and with his dilated red nostrils and eyes wide with fright, went dashing off into the woods. II. “The horse! the horse! Here he is! here he is!” shouted Jack, taking out after him as hard as he could, and calling to Jake to come on. In a minute or two the horse was far beyond them, and they stopped to listen and get his direction; and while they were talking, even the sound of his trampling died away. But they had found him. They knew he was still there, a wild horse in the woods. In their excitement all their fear had vanished as quickly as it had come. Jake suggested something about being cut off at the tree, but Jack pooh-poohed it now. He was afire with excitement. How glad his mother would be! What would not the soldiers say? “You didn’t see him, Jake?” No, Jake admitted he did not, but he heard him. And Jack described him--two white feet, one a fore foot and one a hind foot, a star in his forehead, and a beautiful mane and tail. Jake suddenly found that he had seen him. They went back to the little open place in the ravine where the horse had been. It was a low, damp spot between very high banks, that a little higher--at a point where the water in rainy weather, running over a fallen log in the hill-side, had washed out a deep hole--had become nothing but a gully, with the banks quite perpendicular and coming together. The stream was dry now except for a little water in the hole at the tree. Trees and bushes grew thick upon the banks to the very edge. Below, where it widened, the banks became lower, and the little flat piece between them was covered with coarse grass, now cropped quite close. The horse evidently fed there. Jack sat down and thought. He looked all over the ground. Then he got up, and walked along the banks around the hole; then he came back, and walked up the gully. Suddenly a light broke over his face. “I’ve got it, Jake; I’ve got it, Jake. We can trap him. If we get him in here, we’ve got him.” Jake was practical. “How you gwine ketch hoss in trap?” he asked, his idea of a trap being confined to hare gums. “’Twill take all de plank in de worl’ to make a hoss-trap. Besides, how you gwine git it heah? I ain’ gwine tote it.”