The moment to lose my horse, which I had been anticipating from the first, had come at last. My pursuers were gaining on me and the question of which of them should have the pleasure of shooting me was merely a question of who should hit first. They were still too far behind and the moonlight too indistinct in the narrow and wooded gorge, which the road had just entered, for them to see me, but they were drawing closer every moment. Freeing my feet from the stirrups, I gave my horse a cut with the whip and slipped to the ground. Lightened of his burden he flew on with accelerated speed, his hoofs ringing down the rocky road and guiding my pursuers past where I lay at the bottom of a ravine, down the sides of which I had tumbled with celerity and a series of somersaults of which a circus rider need not have been ashamed. CHAPTER VI. I was not in a very amiable frame of mind and passed a bad quarter of an hour while I sat down there on a stump, recovering myself and deciding what to do next. I still had over thirty miles to go and instead of reaching my destination before morning, as I had just decided I would be able to do, I was left without a horse and in very poor trim to make good speed on foot. However, I started on, determined to investigate every place along my road and get a horse if possible without leave or license, but fearing that all not already confiscated were in too secure hiding for me to unearth. I had some hope of finding my own poor beast, but it was not realized. Every house I came to was dark and forsaken looking and all the inmates seemed to be away or asleep. Even the dogs made no disturbance, if there were any around. My search in stables, sheds and pasture lots only took up time, without gaining help, for not a sign of a horse did I find. At last, while making a circuit to bring me around by the place of a man named Carter, thinking he might have something left in the way of horseflesh, as he had a remarkable way of holding on to everything belonging to him, I saw a light in a small cabin perched near a road. I had come on the place from the rear, as I was taking a short cut. Drawing near with much circumspection, I could hear the sound of voices and laughing. Evidently from the noise a good time of some kind was in progress. I crept up in the shadow of the house near enough to look around an angle and see into the room. Three officers in Confederate gray were seated at a table taking supper, and laughing and joking with a long, lean mountaineer, who seemed to be plying them with questions, while his wife served them. As I watched, a pretty girl entered from another room with a jug of cider, which she proceeded to pour out into tumblers. At the sight of the foaming liquid one of the officers trolled a verse of a rollicking drinking song.