Fear had oozed out of my fingers' ends, in lifting the latch, just as valor did from those of Bob Acres, and Jenkins was himself again. We jobbed our bayonets under the lager-beer counter, to provide for the case of any lurking foe in that quarter. Just here the road forked. Sending two of us to the right, the rest kept on the Alexandria. 'Look there,' chatters Todd second between his teeth, wafting in my face a mingled odor of fear and gin cocktails. 'Where?' 'Why there! on top of the hill--a horse.' 'Is that a horse?' 'Yes.' 'A man on him, too!' 'Two of 'em!' Click, click, click, from our locks. We creep on and up stealthily. We are scarcely thirty yards distant from the two horsemen, when a man darts out from the left-hand side of the road behind us--two men--three! We are surrounded. Todd second would have fired, but I held him back. '_Who's that?_' I whispered; '_speak quick, or I fire!_' 'Can't you see, you d--d fool,' barks out our surly adjutant, who, unknown to us, had been leading a similar scout on the opposite side of the road. Click, click, from up the hill. The enemy are going to shoot. An awful moment. We steady our rifles and our nerves; all trace of fear is gone; nothing remains but eagerness for the conflict that seems so near, and with a bound, without waiting for orders, we move quickly up the hill. Lieutenant Harch moves his men out into the road, where the bright moonlight betrays, perhaps multiplies, their number; the horsemen spring to their saddles, and are off at a clattering gallop, to alarm Alexandria. 'Don't shoot!' shrieks the adjutant; our rifles waver; the hill hides the flying picket; the chance is lost; presently all Alexandria will be awake, and a beautiful surprise frustrated. As we peer into the moonlit distance from the top of the hill now almost spaded away and trimmed up into Fort Runyon, feeling the solemnity of the occasion impressed upon us with dramatic force by all the surroundings--by our loneliness, by our character as the harbingers of the advance of the armies of American freedom and American nationality, and by the recent flight of the first squad of the enemy whom we had met with hostile purpose: as we dreamily drink in all these and many other vague ideas, up comes our battalion, and occupies the hill, the major sending off a company to hold the bridge where the road crosses the canal and forks to Arlington and Fairfax Court House. Presently there pass by us regiments from Michigan, New York, New Jersey, and it may be from other States which I forget. Some turn off to the right, to settle on the hill which is now scooped into Fort Albany; others press forward to Alexandria, the bells of which town very soon begin to ring a frightened peal of alarm and confusion. We move out a half mile farther and halt, our night's work being over, and other things in store; the moonlight wanes, and grows insensibly into a chilly daylight, presently reddened by the sun of to-morrow.