Colonel Hertford, nevertheless, sent off a strong scouting party in that direction, but as it approached the horseman on the hill rode over the other side and disappeared.
All that day they advanced through a lonely and hostile country.

It was a region intensely Southern in its sympathies, and it seemed that everybody, including the women and children, had fled before them.
Horses and cattle were gone also and its loneliness was accentuated by the fact that not so long before it had been a well-peopled land, where now the houses stood empty and silent.

They saw no human beings, save other watchmen on the hills making signals, but they were far away and soon gone.
By noon both horses and men showed great fatigue.

They had slept but little the night before, and, toughened as they were by war, they had reached the limit of endurance.

So the trumpet sounded the halt in a meadow beside a fine stream, and all, save those who were to ride on the outskirts and watch for the enemy, dismounted gladly.