Riflemen rose out of the thickets, but he always gave them the
password, and rode on without stopping.
Then came a space where he met no human being, the gap between Hill and
Longstreet, and now the Wilderness became incredibly lonely and dreary.
Harry felt that if ever a region was haunted by ghosts it was this.
The dead of last year's battle might be lying everywhere, and as the
breeze sprang up the melancholy thickets waved over them.
He was two-thirds of the way toward the point where he expected to find
Longstreet when he heard the sough of a hoof in the mud behind him.
Harry listened and hearing the hoof again he was instantly on his guard.
He did not know it, but the character of the night and the wild aspect of
the Wilderness were bringing out all the primeval and elemental qualities
in his nature. He was the great borderer, Henry Ware, in the Indian-
haunted forest, feeling with a sixth sense, even a seventh sense, the
presence of danger.
He was following a path, scarcely traceable, used by charcoal burners and
wood-cutters, but when he heard the hoof a second time he turned aside
into the deepest of the thickets and halted there. The hoofbeat came a
third time, a little nearer, and then no more.
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