It was a still, starlit night. The roads were yet heavy with mud. The horses sank to their fetlocks and squashed noisily through the mire until the little party were able to turn into the cart-tracks through the thick woods, and, joined now by the field officer of the day, they pushed on to the outposts. It was the dark of the moon. The blackness of the groves and copses was intense. Objects, except on the open field or against the sky, could hardly be distinguished five feet away. But every now and then there would come the muffled challenge of sentries at inner posts of the guard, and it was over half an hour before they reached the outermost groups, with the line of night sentinels some distance ahead. To every inquiry at every station of officer or sergeant, the answer was the same, all quiet, all alert. There had been much shooting at patrols and pickets for over a month, a practice both sides soon abandoned, but at the time there was hazardous, nerve-trying duty at the front, and few men welcomed it except for the excitement. Somewhere in the neighborhood of ten o'clock, following in single file a winding wood track, a sergeant leading afoot, the party approached the southern edge of a strip of woods and halted while the corporal stepped ahead to assure the sentinel. Then the general rode quietly up to question the man, the sergeant assuming his watch the while, for even in presence of the commander-in-chief there must be no cessation of vigilance. To the queries as to where the nearest sentries were posted? what were his own instructions? what he would do in certain emergencies? the soldier answered promptly, perhaps a bit impatiently, even as though he might have enjoyed the catechism at another time, but had some weightier matter in hand at the moment. He kept turning and glancing out across the open field to the south, stooping once or twice as though to peer at something against the sky, and the general saw and questioned. "Anything unusual about?" "Why, yes, sir; at least I think so. The patrol that came by ten minutes ago said that they had heard horses galloping out across the fields, and I could have sworn I heard hoofs on this here bridle-path where it dips into yon woods. By day nobody can come across here without our seeing them. By night we can't see unless we lie flat and look up, and then they could get within a rod or two."