I engaged him in conversation, and, among other things, spoke of the prospect of sudden death as one always present in our army life, and the tendency it had to either harden or soften the character according to the quality of the individual. He expressed the opinion which many hold, that a brutal man is made more brutal by it, and a refined and cultivated man is softened. We were on the immediate flank of Early’s army. His cavalry was all around us. The road was much used. It was almost night. We had passed a rebel picket but a mile back, and knew not how near another camp might be. The three rebel guards were riding in front of us and on our flanks. Our party of prisoners was in the centre, and I was by the side of Lieutenant Whiting, who acted as rear-guard, when we entered a small copse of willows which for a moment covered the road. The hour was propitious. I gave the fatal signal and instantly threw myself from my saddle upon the Lieutenant, grasping him around the arms and dragging him from his horse, in the hope of securing his revolver, capturing him, and compelling him to pilot us outside of the rebel lines. At the same instant Mack raised one of the loaded carbines, and, in less time than I can write it, shot two of the guard in front of him, killing them instantly; and then coolly turning in his saddle, and seeing me struggling in the road with the Lieutenant, and the chances of obtaining the revolver apparently against me, he raised the carbine the third time; and as I strained the now desperate rebel to my breast, with his livid face over my left shoulder, he shot him as directly between the eyes as if firing at a target at ten paces distance. Brown had only wounded his man in the side, and allowed him to escape. Our position was now perilous. Not a man of us knew the country, except in a general way. The rebel camps could not be far away; the whole country would be alarmed in an hour, darkness was intervening; and I doubted not that, before sundown, blood-hounds as well as men would be on our track. One-half our party had already scattered, panic-stricken, at the first alarm, and they were flying through the country in every direction. Only five remained, including the faithful Wash, who immediately showed his practical qualities by searching the bodies of the slain, and recovering, among other things, my gold hunting-watch from the person of Lieutenant Whiting, and over eleven hundred dollars in greenbacks, the proceeds, doubtless, of their various robberies of our men. “Not quite nuff,” said Wash, showing his ivories from ear to ear. “Dey vally dis nigger at two thousand dollars. I tink I ought to git de money.”