From the moment the order had fallen into my hands, my one desire and aim was to get it where the information it contained, together with what other I had gathered, could be put to instant use. Every nerve throbbed with impatience. Every delay was intolerable. Yet that entire ride back was a series of vexatious and dangerous delays. I was beset on every side by dangers, which closed in on me at every point where I tried to evade them. Every mile counted for four in my eagerness to get on. I was obliged, time after time, to retrace my steps and make long detours to avoid running into bodies of skirmishers, to escape the vigilance of pickets, and to baffle the pursuers on our tracks. Twice that night we stood with our coats drawn tightly over our horses' heads to keep them from making a sound to betray our presence to the enemy, passing so closely below that by stooping, we could have lifted the hats off of their heads with a ramrod. Shortly after daybreak, as the first rays of of the sun showed over a neighboring hill, I lay in a hollow log, while a man from the column of passing soldiers sat on it to beat the dirt and stones from his remnants of shoes. The dust from the inside of the log, loosened by his pounding, choked me, until in my efforts to keep from coughing, I bit through the sleeve of my coat, and left the print of my teeth on my arm. About six hundred soldiers marched past me, as I watched them from a crevice in the log. Across the road and half way up the hill beyond I could see where Ned crouched, keeping the horses back in the shelter of a low thicket. Knowing exactly where to look for him, he stood out with terrible distinctness to my abnormally keen sight, and I trembled whenever I saw a soldier turn his head in that direction. Even now, as I think it over, with all my increased experience and knowledge of hair-breadth escapes, it seems simply incredible that we ever got through. But get through we did. By eight o'clock, exhausted to faintness from hard riding, lack of food and loss of sleep, and with horses reeling from fatigue, we turned out onto a road which in a few minutes took us beyond danger. Loyal hands placed fresh horses at our disposal, and with little loss of time, we were covering the last ten miles of our ride. Soon the bit of paper, that "Lost Dispatch," which through all that long and fearful night had been the elixir that nerved me to my work, was in the hands of the proper officer, and I had communicated to him the additional information I had gathered. Both information and dispatch, without delay, were carried to the Commander in Chief. I only did my duty. My responsibility ended there. But looking back now, it seems, as it did then, that better results should have been obtained through a quick action on the intelligence gathered. THE END. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lost Dispatch, by Anonymous