forest in a diagonal line, described a curve in the air, and fell at his feet.

A little white note was attached to the arrow.

Instinctively Schuyler picked it up, just as the tame bear stopped in front of him and stood rubbing his head against him, in a friendly and confiding manner. The hussar opened the note and read as follows:

“Ride the horse in sight of Derryfield. Then strip off his bridle, and turn him loose. I have ventured much for your sake. Keep our secret for mine.

 “Diana.” 

Diana.

“Ay, by heavens, I will, sweet Diana,” cried the hussar, in loud tones, intended to catch the ear of a person concealed in the woods. “A thousand blessings on your head. You have saved your country one disaster.”

[Pg 40]

[Pg 40]

Without a moment’s delay he took the bridle of the horse, cast it over the animal’s head, and mounted.

The horse was a nobly formed creature, but Schuyler could not help noticing its strange appearance and trappings. The animal was coal-black, without a white hair, and its housings were of the same somber color, with a shabracque of black velvet, worked with a skull and cross-bones on the covers. The same ghastly emblem was repeated on the frontlet of the bridle in white, and the curb was shaped like a human finger-bone.

The hussar was too much rejoiced, however, to find any fault with his equivocal mount. It was evidently a fine horse; and a moment later, he was galloping through the woods to Derryfield.

CHAPTER VIII.

BURGOYNE’S IMP.

The night brooded over the white tents, and glimmering fires of a great army, which lay on the open ground near Saratoga. Street after street of tents and marquees, in martial array, stretched its long lines, now silent and dark, perpendicular to the color line. Outside the camp glimmered embers of the few fires that were left burning, and some distance off, on the plain, and amid the little patches of wood, were the brighter fires that told of the outlying pickets.

Occasionally, the distant challenge of a sentry would 

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