For hours that seemed weeks she remained entangled in the slow-moving mass, whose bewildering vagaries of motion were as trying to the endurance of her steed as they were exasperating to her own impatience.

Occasionally she caught glimpses of the Union camp-fires in the distance, that, low and smoldering, told of the waning night, and she would look anxiously over her left shoulder for a hint of the coming of the dreaded dawn.

Her mare terrified her with symptoms of giving out.
At last she saw an unmistakable silvery break in the eastern clouds.
Half-frantic she broke suddenly out of the throng by an abrupt turn to the right, and lashing her mare savagely, galloped where a graying in the dense darkness showed an opening between two cedar thickets, that led to the picket-fires, half a mile away.

The mare's hoofs beat sonorously on the level limestone floor, which there frequently rises through the shallow soil and starves out the cedar.
"Halt! Go back," commanded a hoarse voice in front of her, which was accompanied with the clicking of a gunlock.

"Ye can't pass heah." "Lemme pass, Mister," she pleaded.