They did not reach Bath that night. They lay down and slept behind a screen of hills and awoke in an amethyst dawn to a sky of promise. The light, streaming from the east, made glorious the ice-laden trees and the far and dazzling wastes of snow. The sunshine cheered the troops. Bath was just ahead--Bath and the Yankees! The 1st Tennessee and the 48th Virginia suddenly swung from the main road, and moved across the fields to the ridges overlooking the town. Apparently they had gathered their strength into a ball, for they went with energy, double-quickening over the snow. The afternoon before Carson and Meems had been detached, disappearing to the right. A rumour ran through the ranks. This force would be now on the other side of Bath. "It's like a cup, all of us on the rim, and the Yanks at the bottom. If Carson can hold the roads on the other side we've got them, just like so many coffee grounds! Fifteen hundred of them in blue, and two guns?--Boys, I feel better!" Old Jack--the men began with suddenness again to call him Old Jack--Old Jack divulged nothing. Information, if information it was, came from scouts, couriers, Ashby's vedettes, chance-met men and women of the region. Something electric flashed from van to rear. The line went up the hill with rapidity. When they reached the crest the men saw the cavalry far before and below them, charging upon the town and shouting. After the horse came a body of skirmishers, then, pouring down the hillside the 1st Tennessee and the 48th Virginia, yelling as they ran. From the town burst a loud rattle of musketry, and from a height beyond a cannon thundered. All the white sides of the cup echoed the sound. The infantry swerved to let the artillery by. The guns, grim beneath their ice coats, the yelling men, the drivers loudly encouraging the horses, the horses, red-nostrilled, wide-eyed--all came somehow, helter-skelter down the long windings of the ridge. The infantry followed; the town was entered; the Federals retreated, firing as they went, streaming out by two roads. One led toward Sir John's Run, the other direct to the Potomac with Hancock on the Maryland shore, and at Hancock General Lander with a considerable force. Carson's men, alack! had found the winter hills no bagatelle. They were not in time to secure the roads.