It was a rough affair. For ten minutes the result was doubtful. The Federal cavalry were apparently commanded by an officer of excellent nerve, and he fought his men obstinately. For nearly a quarter of an hour the wood was full of sabre-strokes, carbine-shots, and yells, which mingled with the roll of the storm. Then the fight ended. My friend of the cocked pistol threw himself, sabre in hand, upon the Federal front, and it shook, and gave back, and retreated. The weight of the onset seemed to sweep it, inch by inch, away. The blue squadron finally broke, and scattered in every direction. The grays pressed on with loud cheers, firing as they did so:--five minutes afterward, the storm-lashed wood had swallowed pursuers and pursued. The whole had disappeared like phantom horsemen in the direction of the Rappahannock. IV. MOHUN AND HIS PRISONER. Half an hour afterward, the storm had spent its fury, and I was standing by a bivouac fire on the banks of the Rappahannock, conversing with the officer against whom I had driven my horse in the darkness. Mounted upon a powerful gray, he had led the attack with a sort of fury, and I now looked at him with some curiosity. He was a man of about thirty, of gaunt face and figure, wearing a hat with a black feather, and the uniform of a colonel of cavalry. The features were regular and might have been called handsome; the eyes, hair, mustache, and imperial--he wore no beard--coal black; the complexion so pale that the effect was startling. More curious than all else, however, was the officer’s expression. In the lips and eyes could be read something bitterly cynical, mingled with a profound and apparently ineradicable melancholy. After looking at my new acquaintance for an instant, I said to myself: “This man has either suffered some great grief, or committed some great crime.” His bearing was cold, but courteous. “I recognized you as soon as I saw you, colonel,” he said, in response to my salute. “You probably do not know me, however, as I have just been transferred from the Army of the West. Colonel Mohun, at your service.” I exchanged a pressure of the hand with Colonel Mohun, or, speaking more correctly, I grasped his. It did not return the pressure. I then thanked him for his timely appearance, and he bowed coldly. “It was lucky that my scout led me in this direction,” he said, “that party is whipped back over the river, and will give us no more trouble to-night--the woods are full of their dead and wounded.” As he spoke he took a cigar case from his pocket, and presented it. “Will you smoke, sir?” he said. I bowed and selected a cigar. Colonel Mohun imitated me, and was about to commence smoking, when two or three cavalry men were seen approaching through the gloom, apparently escorting some one. As they drew nearer the figures became plainer in the firelight. The cavalry men had in charge a female prisoner.