We had them at a disadvantage. They were still in the glare of light from the windows, while we were in the darkness, and we were sixty mounted men to eleven cavalrymen, whose horses had been captured. Moreover we had carbines, and they had none. By the time we had made an alignment under the trees, and before Field Mann could give another order, the captain came running up on foot, leaped into the saddle of one of the captured horses, and quickly gave a command that completely surrounded the house. We had those men penned; but just then their comrades at the neighboring picket post discovered that there was trouble on hand, and advanced upon us. It was an exciting fight there in the darkness and under the trees, so exciting that Stuart quickly sent two other companies to our reinforcement. At the end of an hour, we marched back with some prisoners; the rest of our foes had scattered and disappeared. When we got to the camp-fires behind the hills, Charlie Irving dismounted, and greeting the lady, who was laboriously mending a torn gown with a hairpin, said: “I hope you managed to ride Selim? He’s a demon sometimes, and not at all courteous to ladies. But there was nothing for it but to trust you to him.” She murmured something courteous in reply. Then turning with blazing eyes to the Federal officer who had been in command of the party, she asked: “What were you going to do with me, if I hadn’t been rescued?” He replied: “I suppose you would have been hanged as a spy.” And it was true. After breakfast the next day--I remember that breakfast consisted of some green corn taken from a neighboring field and roasted in the ashes with the husks on, and by the way that’s the best way to cook green corn--we escorted the lady back to her home, and under Stuart’s orders stationed two cavalry companies in front as a guard. There is no doubt, I suppose, that the lady was a spy, and that her green window blind had communicated much valuable information. But no; there was no courtship, no marriage, no honeymoon, no romance, to follow. The lady was forty-five, if a day; and besides that, Irving was already engaged to a girl down South. YOUNGBLOOD’S LAST MORNING We were all well used to seeing men shot, but this was different. It was a soft, warm, mellow autumn morning. It was a day suggestive of all gentleness. A purple, Indian-summer haze enveloped the earthworks and the camps. Nature had issued an invitation to peace and repose. The cannon were not at work. Nobody on either side had been tempted to bombard anybody else. Even the mortars and the sharp-shooters were still. It was not the kind of morning for the bloody work of war. Yet a young man was to be killed within the hour. He was to be killed deliberately, in cold blood, by sentence of a court-martial, and with great pomp and ceremony; and nobody, even in his heart, could say nay to the justice of the sentence. For Youngblood had done an infamous thing.