Through that haze I heard the challenge of the sentries; I saw a soldier prod with his bayonet a young lad who had fainted from hæmorrhage, and whom he swore at for shamming. I was conscious of the entrance of a group of officers, whom I knew afterwards to be the Northern General and his staff, who came to look at their captives. I knew, but only dreamily still, that these men were the holders of our fate, and would decide on it then and there. I felt a listless indifference, utter and opium-like, as to what became of me, and I remember that Stuart Lane, and Dash himself, rose together, and stood looking with a serene and haughty disdain down on the conquerors who held their lives in the balance--without a trace of pain upon their faces now. I remember how like they looked to stags that turn at bay; like the stags, outnumbered, hunted down, with the blood of open wounds and the dust of the long chase on them; but, like the deer, too, uncowed, and game to the finish. Very soon their doom was given. Seven were to be sent back with a flag of truce to be exchanged for the seven Federal officers they wanted out of the Southerners' hands, ten were to be transmitted to the prisons of the North,--three were to be shot at day-dawn in the reprisal before named. The chances of life and of death were to be drawn for by lottery, and at once. Not a sound escaped the Virginians, and not a muscle of their English Leader's face moved: the prisoners, to a man, heard impassively, with a grave and silent dignity, that they were to throw the die in hazard, with death for the croupier and life for the stake. The General and his staff waited to amuse themselves with personally watching the turns of this new _Rouge et Noir_; gambling in lives was a little refreshing change that sultry, dreary, dun-colored night, camped amongst burnt-out farms and wasted corn-lands.