And so, guided and fed by darkies, hiding by day and journeying occasionally by night, they kept on for nearly a week, heading for the Potomac about Edwards' Ferry, hoping to dodge all patrols meantime and to discover some way of slipping past the pickets as they neared the river. Nearer Washington every bridle-path they knew would be guarded. Through the relays of darkies they learned that General Beauregard's army had enveloped the defences of the capital on the south side of the Potomac, and that troops were passing to and fro all over the country between Leesburg and Alexandria. Major Stark said, therefore, their only chance was to lie in hiding somewhere until his leg had knit. Money he still fortunately had in sufficient quantity. Keating still had his rifle and revolver, though the major and Snipe had been bereft of their pistols. Their negro friend led them to a dense thicket in a deep ravine, far from the highways and byways. Wood and water were abundant. Shelter they made of boughs. Food and news the darkies brought them in quantities, and here they nursed their plucky major and studied the country toward the Potomac until at last the bone seemed knitting, and then, one starlit night, late in August, pushed cautiously on again, still taking their wagon, and with the dawn of the next day they were across the Leesburg road and deep in the woods toward the ferry. Here another stay became necessary. Southern pickets and patrols lined the banks of the stream, and a day or two later their new guide, a negro boy of eighteen, crept to them in terror to say he felt sure somebody must have "peached," for "cavalry gemmen" were inquiring at every house and hamlet. A whole company had ridden out from Vienna that very day, and they were asking if any one had seen a two-horse farm wagon, with a sick man in it, and two other men driving. Troopers were beating up the wood roads then. In half an hour the wagon was in ashes, the tires and iron work hidden in the brush, and with Stark astride one horse, Snipe and Keating alternating on the other, they pushed through the forest to another hiding-place, hearing the whoops and yells and signal shots of the cavalry every hour until dusk. Then, with their negro guide, they kept on all night long, halting and dodging every little while; hid in the woods within sound of the Southern bugles all another day; stole on southeastward all another night, until their guide said Lewinsville was not a mile away to the south, and the Yankee pickets in front of Chain Bridge only a mile or so to the northeast. That day proved most eventful of all. Hungry, thirsty, and weary, they were waiting the return of Brennus, as was the classic name of their guide, when about dark he reached them empty-handed. Not a moment was to be lost, said he. The cavalry had struck their trail and were following the horse-tracks through the woods. There was an abandoned hut, a woodman's, half a mile