No immediate cause for the disorder of the rebels could be seen.  The Union troops were not in sight.  I expected the brigade to soon make a stand, but the retreat continued; sometimes I caught the contagion and ran along with running men, although I was sure that organised bodies were now covering our rear.  I had no distinct purpose except to determine the new line.

After some little time I began to wish that I was well out of the scramble, but I saw no way out of it.  Officers were riding about and trying to make the men get into some sort of formation.  Evening was near, but I saw that before darkness should cover me the brigade would be formed again and would make a new stand, or else retreat in better order in the night.

I now gave up all hope of ever returning to find my horse, but felt confident that Jones would recover him.

As I had anticipated, the retreat became less disorderly, and at last ceased altogether.  The officers succeeded in forming a line across a road running to the westward, which I believed, from my knowledge of the map, to be the Ashcake road.  When I reached this forming line I hesitated.  I thought at first that I ought to make no pretence of joining it; that prudence commanded me to keep far from it.  Then the thought came to me that these disorganized battalions ware forming in any shape they could now take—­men belonging to different companies, and even to different regiments, being side by side; so I got into line with them.

I smiled when I remembered that Dr. Khayme had once said that a spy might find it his duty to desert to the enemy.

The men seemed to have lost none of the proper pride of the soldier, but they were very bitter against some general or other unknown to me, and equally so to them, as it appeared; he had allowed them to be defeated when they could easily have been reenforced.  From the talk which I heard I drew the inference that there was a large force of Confederates within supporting distance, and this new knowledge or suspicion interested me so greatly that I determined to remain longer with these troops—­perhaps even until the next day.

It was now dark.  There had never been any pursuit, so far as I could see.  Soon the troops were put in motion westward, on the road to Ashland.  If we had a skirmish-line on either flank, I did not see it; but we had for rear-guard the Seventh North Carolina, still unbroken, under the command, as I learned, of Colonel Campbell.  It would have been very easy for me to step out of ranks at any time, either to the right or to the left, into the woods—­or into open ground for that matter—­and get away, but such was not now my intention.