ite trash who had looked down
upon us from the sentry boxes for many long months.

I sprang out of the cars and began washing my face and hands in the ditch
at the side of the road. The Rebel Captain, noticing me, said, in the
old, hateful, brutal, imperious tone:

"Git back in dat cah, dah."

An hour before I would have scrambled back as quickly as possible,
knowing that an instant's hesitation would be followed by a bullet.
Now, I looked him in the face, and said as irritatingly as possible:

"O, you go to ----, you Rebel. I'm going into Uncle Sam's lines with as
little Rebel filth on me as possible."

He passed me without replying.

His day of shooting was past.

Descending from the cars, we passed through the guards into our lines,
a Rebel and a Union clerk checking us off as we passed. By the time it
was dark we were all under our flag again.

The place where we came through was several miles west of Wilmington,
where the railroad crossed a branch of the Cape Fear River. The point
was held by a brigade of Schofield's army--the Twenty-Third Army Corps.

The boys lavished unstinted kindness upon us. All of the brigade off
duty crowded around, offering us blankets, shirts shoes, pantaloons and
other articles of clothing and similar things that we were obviously in
the greatest need of. The sick were carried, by hundreds of willing
hands, to a sheltered spot, and laid upon good, comfortable beds
improvised with leaves and blankets. A great line of huge, generous
fires was built, that every one of us could have plenty of place around
them.

By and by a line of wagons came over from Wilmington laden with rations,
and they were dispensed to us with what seemed reckless prodigality.
The lid of a box of hard tack would be knocked off, and the contents
handed to us as we filed past, with absolute disregard as to quantity.
If a prisoner looked wistful after receiving one handful of crackers,
another was handed to him; if his long-famished eyes still lingered as
if enchained by the rare display of food, the men who were issuing said:

"Here, old fellow, there's plenty of it: take just as much as you can
carry in your arms."

So it was also with the pickled pork, the coffee, the sugar, etc. We had
been stinted and starved so long that we could not comprehend that there
was anywhere actually enough of anything.

The kind-hearted boys who were acting as our hosts began preparing food
for the sick, but the