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e value of Confederate scrip. As the time drew near when my companion, according to agreement, was to ride boldly to the river, I stepped down to take a look at his unused flat. He, of course, walked with me. While standing with my foot upon the end of his boat, I heard the tramp of the horses, and said to him, in a quiet tone--"Here is an eagle; you must take me and my companion over." He remonstrated, and could not risk his life for that, &c. Another ten dollars was demanded and paid, the horses were in the flat, and in two minutes we were off for--home. During that dark and uncertain voyage, I had time not only to coax into quietness my restive horse, but also to conclude that it would never do to dismiss our Charon on the other bank, as half an hour might put on our track a squad of cavalry, who, in our ignorance of the roads and country, would soon return us to Rebeldom and a rope. A man who would take twenty dollars for twenty minutes' work, after swearing that his conscience would not allow him to disobey the authorities, was not to be trusted out of your sight. Standing near my companion, I whispered--"This man must pilot us to some point you will know." I should have stated that this deserting soldier was within sixty miles of his home, and had some knowledge of the localities not far north from our present position. With this purpose, I arranged, when we touched the bank, to be in the rear of the ferryman, and followed him as he stepped off the boat, to take breath before a return pull. "Now, my good fellow," said I, "you have done us one good turn for pay, you must do another for friendship. We are strangers here, and you must take us to the foot of Waldon's Ridge, and then we will release you." To this demand he demurred most vigorously; but my determined position between him and the boat, gentle words, and an eloquent exhibition of my six-shooter, the sheen of which the moonlight enabled him to perceive, soon ended the parley, and onward he moved. We kept him in the road slightly ahead of us, with our horses on his two flanks, and chatted as sociably as the circumstances would permit. I am not careful to justify this constrained service exacted of the ferryman, further than to say, that I was now visiting upon the head, or rather the legs, of a real Secessionist, for an hour or two, just what for many months they had inflicted upon me. For six long miles we guarded our prisoner-pilot, and, reaching the
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