You will oblige me particularly if you will tell me where I am going, friend. There is the bugle, and the colours are unrolled. “Forward!” And so we depart. On the borders of Scotland, in the good old times, there was a "Debatable land"-bone of contention between Pict and Anglo-Saxon. In Virginia, lately, there was a similar region, the subject of dispute between Federal and Southron. In Scotland, the men-at-arms and barons fought along the banks of the Tweed; in Virginia, "Mosby's men" and their blue opponents contended on the banks of the Rappahannock. Our "Debatable land" was, in fact, all that fine and beautiful country lying between the Potomac and the last-named river, over which the opposing armies of the North and the South alternately advanced and retired. This land was the home of the scout; the chosen field of the ranger and the partisan. Mosby was king there: and his liegemen lived as jovial lives as did the followers of Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest, in the old days of Merry England. But the romantic lives of Mosby and his men will not be touched on here. The subject would become enthralling were it to be more than alluded to-the pen would drag the hand into a sketch, and not a short one, of that splendid ranger-life amid the Fauquier forests, the heart of " Mosby's Confederacy." Not to-day can I delineate the lithe, keen partisan, with his roving glance, his thin curling lip, his loose swaying belt containing the brace of pistols ready loaded and capped. Some abler hand must draw the chief of rangers, and relate his exploits the design of the present writer is to record some ad |