In the season of 1863, the Rockville Hunting Club, which had been newly organized, was at the height of its success. It was composed of men too old to go in the army, and of young men who were not old enough, or who, from one cause and another, were exempted from military service. Ostensibly, its object was to encourage the noble sport of fox-hunting and to bind by closer ties the congenial souls whose love for horse and hound and horn bordered on enthusiasm. This, I say, was its [v]ostensible object, for it seems to me, looking back upon that terrible time, that the main purpose of the association was to devise new methods of forgetting the sickening [v]portents of disaster that were even then thick in the air. Any suggestion or plan calculated to relieve the mind from the weight of the horror of those desperate days was eagerly seized upon and utilized. With the old men and the fledgling boys in the neighborhood of Rockville, the desire to escape momentarily the realities of the present took the shape of fox-hunting and other congenial amusements. With the women--ah well! Heaven only knows how they sat dumb and silent over their great anguish and grief, cheering the helpless and comforting and succoring the sick and wounded. It was a mystery to me then, and it is a mystery to me now. About the first of November the writer hereof received a long-expected letter from Tom Tunison, the secretary of the club, who was on a visit to Monticello. It was brief and breezy. "Young man," he wrote, "they are coming. They are going to give us a [v]ruffle. Their dogs are good, but they lack form and finish as well as discipline--plenty of bottom but no confidence. I haven't hesitated to put up our horn as the prize. Get the boys together and tell them about it, and see that our own eleven are in fighting trim. You won't believe it, but Sue, Herndon, Kate, and Walthall are coming with the party; and the fair de Compton, who set all the Monticello boys wild last year when she got back from Macon, vows and declares she is coming, too. Remember the 15th. Be prepared." I took in the situation at a glance. Tom, in his reckless style, had bantered a party of Jasper county men as to the superiority of their dogs, and had even offered to give them an opportunity to gain the silver-mounted horn won by the Rockville club in Hancock county the year before. The Jasper county men, who were really breeding some excellent dogs, accepted the challenge, and Tom had invited them to share the hospitality of the plantation home called "Bachelors' Hall."