"No, sir. The pickets say some rebel cavalry crossed the front just before dark, somewhere about two dozen of 'em." And as Snipe now rode along, with over three hundred stalwart fellows trudging at his back, despite all the excitement of the moment his thoughts went back to the school-days and the First Latin, and he wondered what the fellows would think to see him now, guiding a whole battalion to its post of duty, perhaps to its place in battle. He wondered with clinching teeth and quickening breath who could have made those fellows he had so sworn by believe that he, Snipe Lawton, was a common thief. Was that the reason Shorty never wrote again? Was that why no one now seemed to care where he was or what had become of him? The boy's wounded heart beat vehemently in protest and in indignation, and there in the darkness of that 'cross country wood path his lips murmured a prayer for guidance and protection, that he might live to give the lie to that slander,--might so live as to win honor and credit for the name his enemies had besmirched. Two nights before, following his major through a dark lane when visiting sentries, the boy's heart had bounded uncontrollably, and his knees had trembled so hard that his horse, too, seemed to shake, all because a nervous raw recruit had fancied he saw a rebel stealing on him through the blackness of the night, and after vainly challenging a wandering mule, had roused the whole division and nearly killed his major with a single wildly aimed shot. To-night as Snipe thought of the story he had wrung from the unwilling lips of Sergeant Keating, of the Fire Zouaves, one of 40's old "bunkers," the sense of pride and indignation bore down all thought of fear, and Snipe Lawton, who the year before hated drill and wouldn't be a soldier for anything, even now in the dark, where Napoleon himself had said most men were cowards, was praying that the rebels might be there at the bridge, and that he might be foremost in the dash upon them. On past the peering, shadowy knots of soldiers of Sergeant Holman's party he led them, the hard-breathing, swift-striding Yankees swinging along behind. Out over the starlit open to where, well across the field, he could dimly descry the forms of two horsemen. "Well done, orderly," muttered the regular. "You've lost not a second. Now, major, we'll push ahead. Better caution them not to make a sound."