So he smoked and smoked, and the wreath he blew—

“Any sure news of Mosby’s crew?”

He smoked and smoked, eying the while

A huge tree hydra-like in growth—

Moon-tinged—with crook’d boughs rent or lopped—

Itself a haggard forest. “Come”

The Colonel cried, “to talk you’re loath;

D’ye hear? I say he must be stopped,

This Mosby—caged, and hair close cropped.”

“Of course; but what’s that dangling there”