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SPECIAL MESSENGER
41
MILROY IS PURSUED
thick woods and screened from sound as well as vision, but a strange rumbling, unlike the boom of cannon, came from the north, and Milroy decided to push on. He ascended a gradual incline until he reached a country road with a stretch of view north and south.
What was that?
He rose in his saddle and made out a drift of dust, near the ford, to the south.
To the north, near the bridge, there was another settling cloud, not of smoke.
There were no Confederate forces in either region.
It began to appear as tho he had penetrated the enemy's lines unawares.
He urged his horse to a commanding eminence and leveled his glasses at the bridge. The last caissons of a Federal artillery corps were crossing.
To the southwest an army! There were thousands of bluecoats forcing the ford, with cavalry guarding the approaches.
He had passed beyond the lines of a flanking battery and a deploying army of many thousands, intent on pocketing Stuart while that gallant leader was engaged in resisting a fierce attack from the north. The general of Confederate cavalry, with the flower of his troops, would be surrounded and annihilated or ignominiously captured.
Milroy 's hour had come !
He had entered upon the struggle with a great mass of men who believed they were defending their homes from a fanatical invasion, and had done his fair share of fighting with uncomplaining resolution, but he fully realized that he had been risking life and liberty in a cause regarded as hopeless by those of his discerning