The Miskel farmhouse stood on the crest of a low hill, facing the river. Behind it stood the big barn, with a large barnyard enclosed by a high pole fence. As this was a horse farm, all the fences were eight feet high and quite strongly built. A lane ran down the slope of the hill between two such fences, and at the southern end of the slope another fence separated the meadows from a belt of woods, beyond which was the road from Dranesville, along which Flint's column was advancing. * * * * * It was a nasty spot for Mosby. He had between fifty and sixty men, newly roused from sleep, their horses unsaddled, and he was penned in by strong fences which would have to be breached if he were to escape. His only hope lay in a prompt counterattack. The men who had come out of the house and barn were frantically saddling horses, without much attention to whose saddle went on whose mount. Harry Hatcher, who had gotten his horse saddled, gave it to Mosby and appropriated somebody else's mount. As Flint, at the head of his cavalry, emerged from the woods, Mosby had about twenty of his men mounted and was ready to receive him. The Union cavalry paused, somebody pulled out the gate bars at the foot of the lane, and the whole force started up toward the farm. Having opened the barnyard end of the lane, Mosby waited until Flint had come about halfway, then gave him a blast of revolver fire and followed this with a headlong charge down the lane. Flint was killed at the first salvo, as were several of the men behind him. By the time Mosby's charge rammed into the head of the Union attack, the narrow lane was blocked with riderless horses, preventing each force from coming to grips with the other. Here Mosby's insistence upon at least two revolvers for each man paid off, as did the target practice upon which he was always willing to expend precious ammunition. The Union column, constricted by the fences on either side of the lane and shaken by the death of their leader and by the savage attack of men whom they had believed hopelessly trapped, turned and tried to retreat, but when they reached the foot of the lane it was discovered that some fool, probably meaning to deny Mosby an avenue of escape, had replaced the gatebars. By this time, the rest of Mosby's force had mounted their horses, breaches had been torn in the fence at either side of the lane, and there were Confederates in both meadows, firing into the trapped men. Until the gate at the lower end gave way under the weight of horses crowded against it, there was a bloody slaughter. Within a few minutes Flint and nine of his men were killed, some fifteen more were given disabling wounds, eighty-two prisoners were taken, and over a hundred horses and large quantities of arms and ammunition were captured. The remains of Flint's force was chased as far as Dranesville. Mosby was still getting the prisoners sorted out,