position of our forces along the Nashville Railroad, he suddenly
disappeared, to reappear with Basil Duke and John Morgan in a midnight
raid on our slumbering outposts.

Again, a column on the march came upon a wretched woman, with a child in
her arms, seated by the dying embers of a burning homestead,--burning,
she said, because her sole and only friend, her uncle, (these ladies
seldom have any nearer kin,) "stood up stret fur the kentry." No
American soldier ever refused a "lift" to a woman in distress. This
woman was soon "lifted" into an empty saddle by the side of a
staff-officer, who, with many wise winks and knowing nods, was
discussing the intended route of the expedition with a brother
simpleton. A little farther on the woman suddenly remembered that
another uncle, who did not stand up quite so "stret fur the kentry,"
and, consequently, had a house still standing up for him, lived "plumb
up thet 'ar' hill ter the right o' the high-road." She was set down, the
column moved on, and--Streight's well planned expedition miscarried. But
no one wasted a thought on the forlorn woman and the sallow baby whose
skinny faces were so long within earshot of the wooden-headed
staff-officer.

Means quite as ingenious and quite as curious were often adopted to
conceal dispatches, when the messenger was in danger of capture by an
enemy. A boot with a hollow heel, a fragment of corn-pone too stale to
tempt a starving man, a strip of adhesive plaster over a festering
wound, or a ball of cotton-wool stuffed into the ear to keep out the
west wind, often hid a message whose discovery would cost a life, and
perhaps endanger an army. The writer has himself seen the hollow
half-eagle which bore to Burnside's beleaguered force the welcome
tidings that in thirty hours Sherman would relieve Knoxville.

The perils which even the "native" scout encountered can be estimated
only by those familiar with the vigilance that surrounds an army. The
casual meeting with an acquaintance, the slightest act inconsistent with
his assumed character, or the smallest incongruity between his speech
and that of the district to which he professed to belong, has sent many
a good man to the gallows. One of the best of Rosecrans's scouts--a
native of East Kentucky--lost his life because he would "bounce" (mount)
his nag, "pack" (carry) his gun, eat his bread "dry so," (without
butter,) and "guzzle his peck o' whiskey," in the midst of Bragg's camp,
when no suc