To cut off, gobble up, capture, or destroy paymasters and their escorts, quartermaster trains; and commissary trains, Colonel Moseby regarded as his special and particular province, and every one of his men was on the special look-out for chances of this kind. On the occasion now under consideration, Brevet Major Paymaster Tilletson was on his way from Williamsport to Shepherdstown, Md., accompanied by a captain, three lieutenants, and six privates--the latter and one lieutenant as an escort, the other officers returning to their respective commands from sick-leaves. Suddenly, without a moment's warning, Moseby, with a number of his gang, sprang out upon them, and, holding a cocked pistol at the head of each, demanded their surrender. Of course, they could do nothing but submit. Each officer was securely bound, while the privates were either killed or made their escape. In due time the whole party arrived within the Confederate lines, when the Union officers would probably have been made to illustrate Moseby's maxim, that "dead men tell no tales," had not an officer who had his authority direct from the War Department met him and ordered him to send the prisoners to Richmond. Moseby and his men helped themselves to so much of the greenbacks as they could conveniently carry, while tens of thousands of dollars were found next day scattered along the road between Williamsport and Shepherdstown. Not long after the capture just related, Moseby and his men gobbled up another squad of officers, consisting of one major, two captains, and three lieutenants, who had been absent on sick-leaves and were then returning to their respective commands. After they had surrendered as prisoners of war, their money, watches, and everything they had of any value was taken from them. When fairly within the Confederate lines they were taken into a dense pine-grove, some distance off the road, and then told they were all to be hung so soon as the needed preparations could be made. Had a thunderbolt fallen at their feet from a clear sky, these six Union officers could not have been more surprised. All protested against such unmilitary, unusual, inhuman treatment--some begged for life, some wept; but the only reply they could get from Moseby was, "Prepare for death!" Providentially, as it would seem, one young man of Moseby's band had a "heart of flesh," and determined, if possible, to save the lives of these officers. He knew that an officer who had the authority to command Moseby (the same referred to in the preceding incident) was at a farm-house only a few miles from the pine-grove in which they had stopped for temporary encampment, and where these Union officers were to be executed. Slipping away from his comrades, he hastened to the farm-house to tell this officer of what Moseby proposed to do. So soon as the officer was told, he determined to stop it, if they could only reach there before the men were executed. The officer