One matter of surprise to me was that this whole property had escaped molestation. I wondered who could be so favored by the enemy and yet be so devoted to our cause as to signal us from his window with their sentinels at his doors; and as we passed beyond the cornfield\'s farther fence I ventured to ask Ferry.

"Aaron Goldschmidt," he whispered, as we descended into a dry, tangled swamp. In the depths of this wild, beside a roofed pen of logs stored with half a dozen bales of cotton, we were presently in the company of a very small man who tossed a hand in token of great amusement.

"Hello, Ned!" he whispered in antic irony; "what an accident is dat, meeding so! Whoever is expecting someding like dis!"

"Well, I hope nobody, Isidore; I hardly expected it myself, your father set those candles so close the one behind the other."

Isidore doubled with mirth and as suddenly straightened. "Your horse is here since yesterday. She left him--by my father. She didn\'t t\'ink t\'e Yankees is going to push away out here to-night. But he is a pusher, t\'at Grierson! You want him to-night, t\'at horse? He is here by me, but I t\'ink you best not take him, hmm? To cross t\'e creek and go round t\'e ot\'er way take you more as all night; and to go back t\'is same way you come, even if I wrap him up in piece paper you haven\'t got a lawch insite pocket you can carry him?" He laughed silently and the next instant was more in earnest than ever.

"She is in a tight place! She hires my mother\'s pony to ride in to headquarters." He called them hatekvartuss, but we need not. "I t\'ink she is not a prisoner--unless--she wants to come back." He doubled again. "Anyhow, I wish you can see her to-night; she got another doll-baby for t\'e gildren, and she give you waluable informations by de hatfull.... Find her? I tell you how you find her in finfty-nine minutes--vedder permitting, t\'at is."

The last phrase was fitted to a listening pose, and the first mutter of the pending thunder-storm came out of the northwest. Then Isidore hastened through the practical details of his proposition. Ferry drew a breath of enthusiasm. "Can I have my horse, bridled and saddled, in three minutes?"

"I pring um in two!" said Isidore, and vanished. Ferry turned with an overmastering joy in every note of his whispered utterance. "After all!" he said, and I could have thrown my arms around him in pure delight to hear duty and heart\'s desire striking twelve together.

"Smith," he asked, "can you start back without me? Then go at once; I shall overtake you on my horse."

I stole through the cornfield safely; the frequent lightnings were still so well below the zenith as to hide me in a broad confusion of monstrous shadows. But when I came to cross the road no crouching or gliding would do. I must go erect and only at the speed of some ordinary official e............