I chose to let him pass.  To be pursued would have been to throw up the game; all then would have been lost.  I left the road and hid in the shadowy woods.  On came the rider, and as the thundering hoofs hit the road within ten paces of my stand, I saw again the black horse belly to the ground in the moonlight.

Almost at once I started in pursuit.  I would keep this man before me; if he should run upon rebels, the alarm would reach me; so long as he should be in my front, safety for me was at the front and danger elsewhere.  I pursued, keeping within sight where the road stretches were long, going slowly where the ground was hard, lest the noise of my approach should be heard.  Yet I had no difficulty; the courier was straining every nerve to reach his destination, and regarded not his rear.  He crossed roads in haste, and by this I knew that the road was to him familiar; he paused never, but kept his horse at an even gallop through forest and through field, while I followed by jerks, making my horse run at times, and again, fearing I was too near, bringing him back to slower speed.  For miles I followed the black horse.

But now I saw that the night was further spent than I had supposed; light was coming behind me, and the moon was low in the west.  How far to the end?  The black horse is going more slowly; he has gone many weary miles more than mine has gone; his rider is urging him to the utmost; I can see him dig his spurs again and again into the sides of the noble beast, and see him strike, and I see him turn where the road turns ahead of me, and I ride faster to recover him; and now I see black smoke rising at my right hand, and I hear the whistle of the Union steam vessels, and I almost cry for joy, and at the turning of the road my horse rears and almost throws me to the ground, and I see the black horse lying dead, and I spur my horse to pass, and give a cry of terror as a man springs from the left, with carbine presented, and shouts, “Your horse! your horse!  Dismount at once, or I’ll blow your brains out!”

For the rider of the black horse was a Confederate!

Shall I ever forget that moment of dismay and anguish?  Even as I write the thrill of horror returns, and I see a picture of the past:—­the daybreak; a lonely road in the forest; two men and two horses, each pair as unlike as life and death, for one’s horse was dead and the other man was about to die.  Had I been so utterly foolish!  Why had I conceived absolutely that this rider was a Federal?  How could a Federal know the road so well that he had gone over it at full speed, never hesitating, never deflecting into a wrong course?  The instant before, I had been in heaven, for I had known my safe destination was at hand; now, I felt that my end had come to me, for my terror was for myself and not for a lost mission, and I cannot remember that in that smallest second of time any other hope was in me but that of riding this man down and reaching our troops with a mortal bullet in my body.