No good can come of harking back into the past; when once the thing has been done the matter should be ended, and yet I never think of this night without being assailed by a great grief because we were such simples as to hold to the horses while making an attack upon an unmounted foe. It was decided that we would ride as near the negro’s shack as the scouts might deem safe, and then pass to the right and the left in order that the place might be surrounded before the game began. Then we started. In less than ten minutes we were come to the point where it was possible to see the faint glimmer of a flame through the foliage, and Gabriel and Master Sawyer halted while the remainder of us rode to the right and the left in order to encircle the shack. This we might have done without giving an alarm, but for the mishap which befell Henry Moulton. I was the leader of that wing which went toward the right, and Henry rode close behind me. We had gone hardly more than thirty paces from the trail when his horse must have stepped into a hole, for he fell forward with a loud snort of pain, making such a noise among the bushes as could have been heard full two hundred yards away. On the instant came words spoken sharply and quickly, telling that the Tories were on the alert, and then Gabriel’s voice crying: “Ride them down, lads, ride them down! There is no time to be lost!” We were still floundering among the bushes, striving to the best of our ability, but none might see where his horse was going or what obstacle stood in the way. While I was trying to push ahead through a clump of thorn-bushes till the sharp needles pierced my flesh, the crack of muskets was heard, and perhaps a dozen shots were fired before I succeeded in getting around the impediment in my path. Then all was silent, save for the crashing here and there which told that a rider was trying to advance, and when I came up to the fire which had been built directly in front of the shack, no person was to be seen. We had bungled the job as beautifully as any of the redcoats could have done, and to this day a flush of shame comes to my cheek as I remember that we who should have been--really were--versed in woodcraft, blundered ahead on horses amid the thick underbrush and in the darkness, expecting to catch an enemy who was awaiting our arrival. Now it was that we had placed ourselves in a position of gravest danger, for there we set our horses in the full glare of the fire, looking at each other like simples, while all those whom Joseph Marshall had seen were hiding, mayhap, in the thicket just beyond, where they could shoot us down without risk of receiving a shot in return. CHAPTER XVI A SKIRMISH IN THE DARK