oud whisper:

"Dey's a-gwine to take you to Wilmington--ef dey kin get you dar!"

"Can get us there!" said I in astonishment. "Is there anything to
prevent them taking us there?"

The dark face filled with inexpressible meaning. I asked:

"It isn't possible that there are any Yankees down there to interfere,
is it?"

The great eyes flamed up with intelligence to tell me that I guessed
aright; again he glanced nervously around to assure himself that no one
was eavesdropping, and then he said in a whisper, just loud enough to be
heard above the noise of the moving train:

"De Yankees took Wilmington yesterday mawning."

The news startled me, but it was true, our troops having driven out the
Rebel troops, and entered Wilmington, on the preceding day--the 22d of
February, 1865, as I learned afterwards. How this negro came to know
more of what was going on than his masters puzzled me much. That he did
know more was beyond question, since if the Rebels in whose charge we
were had known of Wilmington's fall, they would not have gone to the
trouble of loading us upon the cars and hauling us one, hundred miles in
the direction of a City which had come into the hands of our men.

It has been asserted by many writers that the negros had some occult
means of diffusing important news among the mass of their people,
probably by relays of swift runners who traveled at night, going
twenty-five or thirty miles and back before morning. Very astonishing
stories are told of things communicated in this way across the length or
breadth of the Confederacy. It is said that our officers in the
blockading fleet in the Gulf heard from the negros in advance of the
publication in the Rebel papers of the issuance of the Proclamation of
Emancipation, and of several of our most important Victories. The
incident given above prepares me to believe all that has been told of
the perfection to which the negros had brought their "grapevine
telegraph," as it was jocularly termed.

The Rebels believed something of it, too. In spite of their rigorous
patrol, an institution dating long before the war, and the severe
punishments visited upon negros found off their master's premises without
a pass, none of them entertained a doubt that the young negro men were in
the habit of making long, mysterious journeys at night, which had other
motives than love-making or chicken-stealing. Occasionally a young man
would get caught fifty or seventy-five mi