I revolved, I could not by any chance whisper my tale to the silent
bushes; although, if, at the favorable moment, when the squad was
ordered to march, he but stepped a feather's-throw in advance of me, the
confession could be readily made. His presence would frustrate my plans.
There was one expedient at my beck, but quite hazardous, by the adoption
of which against odds I might compass his death and my freedom,--a
thought which I dismissed on the instant, as it savored of murder and
ingratitude. I must trust that he would give me his back, in spite of
his sense of responsibility, for a breathing-space ere we "fell in."
With his fellow watch-dogs my ruminations had nothing to do. The nearest
of them, owing to their scarcity, (and they had grown trebly valuable
this campaign, as they had grown rarer,) was not within twenty yards of
me. My new world was scarce that distance in the rear. The moment of all
moments, the crisis, the vision of a life-time, eddying through the
brain in the flash of a powder-pan, and stamping red-hot impressions
there, (which in some cases bleach men's hair-roots,) was finally upon
me. My Sergeant turned from me, and I glided with tiger-tread to the
bushes, and laid myself down.

I was, of course, between him and my new friends, and I pretended to
sleep, so that, if he found me, he could scarce suppose that I meditated
leaving him in so loose a manner; and, moreover, my being asleep would
follow naturally upon my reiterated statement that I was sleepy. It
would have been madness to have taken the other side, since, if there
found, the case against me would have been clear. I depended, as is ever
man's wont, upon mere shadows to do much for me where I was.

I have thought often since, however, (then other than the deliberate
thought which every man in trying circumstances has experienced, and
which centres upon one subject, being so severe a tension of all the
faculties as to seem no thought at all, was impossible,) that it would
be unwise, and perhaps a stumbling-block to future Union captives in the
custody of that horrid host, to ascribe my unbroken rest under those
dry, dusty bush-branches simply to the heavy darkness of the evening,
excluding all other causes from participation in my affairs. It was
unusually cloudy, the sky resting overhead like a hanging pall, and
threatening rain with thunder every moment, as is almost always the case
after a hotly contested engagement. The fight that m