stantial
fare within the Confederacy. The central dish was a pork-pie, flanked by
savory little patties of sausage. There were sweet potatoes, fleecy
biscuits, a jug of sorghum, and a pitcher of sweet milk. Most delicious
of all was a variety of corn-bread having tiny bits of fresh pork baked
in it, like plums in a pudding.[17]

[Footnote 17: Major Sill contributes the following evidence of the
impression our trio made upon one, at least, of the piccaninnies who
looked on in the moonlight. The picture of Lieutenants Sill and Lamson
which appears on page 255 was enlarged from a small photograph taken on
their arrival at Chattanooga, before divesting themselves of the rags
worn throughout the long journey. Years afterward Major Sill gave one of
these pictures to Wallace Bruce of Florida, at one time United States
consul at Glasgow. In the winter of 1888-89 Mr. Bruce, at his Florida
home, was showing the photograph to his family when it caught the eye of
a colored servant, who exclaimed: "O Massa Bruce, I know those gen'men.
My father and mother hid 'em in Massa's barn at Pickensville and fed
'em; there was three of 'em; I saw 'em." This servant was a child barely
ten years old in 1864, and could have seen us only through the barn door
while we were eating our supper in the uncertain moonlight. Yet more
than twenty years thereafter he greeted the photograph of the ragged
Yankee officers with a flash of recognition.]

Filling our haversacks with the fragments, we took grateful leave of our
sable benefactors and resumed our journey, retracing our steps to the
point of disagreement of the evening before. Long experience in night
marching had taught us extreme caution. We had advanced along the new
road but a short way when we were startled by the barking of a
house-dog. Apprehending that something was moving in front of us, we
instantly withdrew into the woods. We had scarcely concealed ourselves
when two cavalrymen passed along, driving before them a prisoner. Aware
that it was high time to betake ourselves to the cross-roads and
describe a wide circle around the military station at Pickensville, we
first sought information. A ray of light was visible from a hut in the
woods, and believing from its humble appearance that it sheltered
friends, my companions lay down in concealment while I advanced to
reconnoiter. I gained the side of the house, and, looking through a
crack in the boards, saw, to my surprise, a soldier lying