from the bluffs of the
St. Mary's, or hear a sudden trampling of horsemen by night without
recalling the sounds which startled us on the Field of the Hundred
Pines. The memory of our raid was preserved in the camp by many legends
of adventure, growing vaster and more incredible as time wore on,--and
by the morning appeals to the surgeon of some veteran invalids, who
could now cut off all reproofs and suspicions with "Doctor, I's been
a sickly pusson eber since de _expeditious_." But to me the most vivid
remembrancer was the flock of sheep which we had "lifted." The Post
Quartermaster discreetly gave us the charge of them, and they rilled a
gap in the landscape and in the larder,--which last had before presented
one unvaried round of impenetrable beef. Mr. Obabiah Oldbuck, when he
decided to adopt a pastoral life, and assumed the provisional name of
Thyrsis, never looked upon his flocks and herds with more unalloyed
contentment than I upon that fleecy family. I had been familiar, in
Kansas, with the metaphor by which the sentiments of an owner were
credited to his property, and had heard of a proslavery colt and an
antislavery cow. The fact that these sheep were but recently converted
from "Se-cesh" sentiments was their crowning charm. Methought they
frisked and fattened in the joy of their deliverance from the shadow
of Mrs. A.'s slave-jail, and gladly contemplated translation into
mutton-broth for sick or wounded soldiers. The very slaves who once,
perchance, were sold at auction with yon aged patriarch of the flock,
had now asserted their humanity, and would devour him as hospital
rations. Meanwhile our shepherd bore a sharp bayonet without a crook,
and I felt myself a peer of Ulysses and Rob Roy,--those sheep-stealers
of less elevated aims,--when I met in my daily rides these wandering
trophies of our wider wanderings.

Chapter 4. Up the St. John's

There was not much stirring in the Department of the South early in
1863, and the St. Mary's expedition had afforded a new sensation. Of
course the few officers of colored troops, and a larger number who
wished to become such, were urgent for further experiments in the same
line; and the Florida tax-commissioners were urgent likewise. I well
remember the morning when, after some preliminary correspondence, I
steamed down from Beaufort, S. C., to Hilton Head, with General Saxton,
Judge S., and one or two others, to have an interview on the matter with
Major-General