I went to Gholson. He told me I was relieved of my captive and bade me go care for my horse and return in half an hour. In going I passed close by the Sessions plantation house. Every door and window was thrown wide to the night air, and preparations were in progress for a dance; and as I returned, a slave boy ran across my path, toward the house, bearing a flaming pine torch and followed by two ambulances filled with daughters of the neighborhood in clouds of white gauze. I found the General in fatigue dress. His new finery hung on the tent-pole at his back. Old Dismukes, the bull-necked colonel of the Arkansans, lounged on a camp-cot. Both smoked cigars.

The General asked me a number of idle questions and then said my prisoner had called me a good soldier. Old Dismukes smiled so broadly that I grew hot, believing the Yankee had told them of my tears.

"Smith," said the Colonel, and then smoked and smiled again till my brow beaded,--"tired?"

"No, sir."

"That\'s a lie," he pleasantly remarked, and lay back, enjoying my silent wrath. "Send him, General," he added, "he\'s your man."

The General looked at me between puffs of his cigar. "I hear you\'ve ridden over fifty miles to-day."

"Yes, General." "If I give you a good fresh horse can you go twenty-three miles more by midnight?"

"Yes, General, if I don\'t have to save the horse."

"The horse may have to save you," drawled the Arkansan.

"I think you know Lieutenant Durand?" asked the General, with a quizzical eye.

"Slightly."

"Well, Smith, on his suggestion approved by Major Harper, I have detailed another clerk to the Major."

Rills of perspiration tickled my back like flies. "Can\'t one man do the work?"

"Yes, the new man is detailed in your place."

I almost leaped from the ground in consternation. My whole frame throbbed, my mouth fell open, my tongue was tied.

The man who had got me into this thing--this barrel--lifted the tent-flap. "Mr. Gholson," said the General, "write an order assigning Smith to Ferry\'s scouts."

The flap fell again and my panic was turned into a joy qualified only by a reduced esteem for my general as a judge of character.

Old Dismukes rose. "Good-night. Shall I send this boy that Yankee\'s horse?"

"Oh I was forgetting that; yes, do!"

At the door the Colonel gave me a last look. "Good-night, Legs."

I dared not retort, but I looked so hard at his paunch that the General smiled. Then he asked me if I knew where we were then camped, and I said we were on the Meadville and Fayette road, near Franklin, twenty miles southeast of Fayette and--

"That will do. Now, beyond Fayette, about seven miles north, there\'s a place--"

"Clifton?"

"Don\'t interrupt me, Smith. Yes, Clifton. You\'re not to reach there to-night--"

"I can do it, General."

"You can do as you\'re told; understand?" I understood.

"The enemy are in Fayette to-night," he continued. "So when you get half-way to Fayette, just across Morgan\'s Creek, you\'ll take a dim fork on the right running north along the creek. Ever travel by the stars?"

I began to tell how well I knew the stars, but he stopped me. "Yes; well, keep straight north till you strike the road running east and west between Fayette and union Church. You\'ll find there a little polling-place called Wiggins. Turn west, toward Fayette, and on the north side of the main road, opposite the blacksmith\'s shop, you\'ll come to a small--"

"I see."

"What do you see?" His frown scared me to my finger-tips.

"Why, I suppose I\'m to find there a road down Cole\'s Creek to Clifton."

"Smith, if you interrupt me again............