As for me, my Sagamore had not arrived; and I finally cast a cloak about me and went out to the horse-sheds, where our rifleman lolled, chewing a lump of spruce and holding our three horses.

“Well, Jack,” said I, “this is rare weather for Colonel Tarleton’s fox hunting.”

“They say he hunts an ass, sir, too,” said Jack Mount under his breath. “And I think it must be so, for there be five score of Colonel Sheldon’s dragoons in yonder barns, drawing at jack-straws or conning their thumbs — and not a vidette out — not so much as a militia picket, save for the minute men which Colonel Thomas and Major Lockwood have sent out afoot.”

There was a certain freedom in our corps, but it never