. In
a few minutes a young negro came in, whom the old gentleman introduced as
his son, and whom I immediately recognized as our friend of the prayerful
proclivities. He said that he had been a body servant to his young
master, who was an officer in the Rebel army.

"Golly!" says he, "if you 'uns had stood a little longer at Stone River,
our men would have run."

I turned to him sharply with the question of what he meant by calling us
"You 'uns," and asked him if he believed we were Yankees. He surveyed us
carefully for a few seconds, and then said:

"Yes; I bleav you is Yankees."

He paused a second, and added:

"Yes, I know you is."

I asked him how he knew it, and he said that we neither looked nor talked
like their men. I then acknowledged that we were Yankee prisoners,
trying to make our escape to our lines. This announcement put new life
into the old lady, and, after satisfying herself that we were really
Yankees, she got up from her seat, shook hands with us, and declared we
must have a better supper than we had had. She set immediately about
preparing it for us. Taking up a plank in the floor, she pulled out a
nice flitch of bacon, from which she cut as much as we could eat, and
gave us some to carry with us. She got up a real substantial supper,
to which we did full justice, in spite of the meal we had already eaten.

They gave us a quantity of victuals to take with us, and instructed us as
well as possible as to our road. They warned us to keep away from the
young negros, but trust the old ones implicitly. Thanking them over and
over for their exceeding kindness, we bade them good-by, and started
again on our journey. Our supplies lasted two days, during which time we
made good progress, keeping away from the roads, and flanking the towns,
which were few and insignificant. We occasionally came across negros,
of whom we cautiously inquired as to the route and towns, and by the
assistance of our map and the stars, got along very well indeed, until we
came to the Suwanee River. We had intended to cross this at Columbus or
Alligator. When within six miles of the river we stopped at some negro
huts to get some food. The lady who owned the negros was a widow, who
was born and raised in Massachusetts. Her husband had died before the
war began. An old negro woman told her mistress that we were at the
quarters, and she sent for us to come to the house. She was a very
nice-looking lady, about t