fringed with thickets of bushes and young hardwood growth, which for the moment had hid the town from me, and no doubt concealed me from the people close at hand. To retreat through such a strip of woodland was impossible without discovery. Besides, somewhere on my back trail were enemies, though just where I could not know. For a moment’s despair, it seemed to me that only the wings of a bird could save me now; then, as I involuntarily cast my gaze aloft, the thought to climb followed; and up I went into the branches, where the blaze of foliage concealed me; and lay close to a great limb looking down over the top of the thicket to the open river bank. And what I saw astounded me; the enemy’s baggage wagons were fording the river; his cattle-drove had just been herded across, and the open space was already full of his gaunt cows and oxen.