Chapter XLII

----Weariness Can snore upon the flint.--CYMBELINE.

_Montano._ But is he often thus

_Iago._ 'Tis evermore the prologue to his sleep.--OTHELLO.

[Sidenote: CURIOUS CONFUSION OF NAMES.]

It was now five o'clock in the morning of Saturday, December 24th, the seventh day of our escape. Leaving my companions behind, I tapped at the door of a log-house.

"Come in," said a voice; and I entered. In its one room the children and father were still in bed; the wife was already engaged in her daily duties. I asked:

"Can you direct me to the widow ----?"

"There are two widow ----s, in this neighborhood," she replied. "What is your name?"

I was seeking information, just then, not giving it; so avoiding the question, I added:

"The lady I mean, has a son who is an officer in the army."

"They both have sons who are officers in the army. Don't be afraid; you are among friends."

"Friends" might mean Union or it might mean Rebel; so I accepted no amendments, but adhered to the main question:

"This officer is a lieutenant, and his name is John."

"Well," said she, "they are both lieutenants, and John is the name of both!"

I knew my man too well to be baffled. I continued: "He is in the second regiment of the Senior Reserves; and is now on duty at ----."

"Oh," said she, "that is my brother!"

At once I told her what we were. She replied, with a wonderful light of welcome shining in her eyes:

"If you are Yankees, all I have to say is, that you have come to exactly the right place!"

[Sidenote: FOOD, SHELTER, AND HOSTS OF FRIENDS.]

And, in exuberant joy, she bustled about, doing a dozen things at once, talking incoherently the while, replenishing the fire, bringing me a seat, offering me food, urging her husband to hurry out for the rest of the party. At last her excitement culminated in her darting under the bed, and reappearing on the surface with a great pint tumbler filled to the brim with apple-brandy. There was enough to intoxicate our whole party! It was the first form of hospitality which occurred to her. Afterward, when better acquainted, she explained:

"You were the first Yankee I ever saw. The moment I observed
your clothing, I knew you must be one, and I wanted to throw
my arms about your neck, and kiss you!"

We heartily reciprocated the feeling. Just then the only woman who had any charms for us was the Goddess of Liberty; and this, at least, was one of her handmaidens.

We were soon by the great log fire of a house where friends awaited us. Belonging to the secret Union organization, they had received intelligence that we were on the way. Our feet were blistered and swollen; mine were frostbitten. We removed our clothing, and were soon reposing in soft feather beds. At noon, awakened for breakfast, we found "Junius" had been sleeping like a child, and was now hungry--a relief to our anxiety. After the meal was over, we returned to bed.

[Sidenote: LOYALTY OF THE MOUNTAINEERS.]

Our friends were constantly on the alert; but the house was very secluded, and they were not compelled to watch outside. There, two ferocious dogs were on guard, rendering it unsafe for any one to come within a hundred yards of them. Nearly all the people, Loyal and Rebel, had similar sentinels. Along the route, we had been anathematizing the canine race, which often prevented us from approaching negro-quarters on the plantations; but these were Union dogs, which made all the difference in the world.

At dark, we were conducted to a barn, where, wrapped in quilts, we passed a comfortable night.

VIII. _Sunday, December 25._

Our resting-place was in Wilkes County, North Carolina, among the outlying spurs of the Alleghanies--a county so strong in its Union sentiments, that the Rebels called it "the Old United States." Among the mountains of every Southern State, a vast majority of the people were loyal. Hilly regions, unadapted to cotton-culture, contained few negroes; and where there was no Slavery, there was no Rebellion. Milton's verse--

"The _mountain_ nymph, sweet Liberty,"

contains a great truth, the world over.

[Sidenote: A LEVEE IN A BARN.]

Our self-sacrificing friends belonged to a multitudinous family, extending through a settlement many miles in length. They all seemed to be nephews, cousins, or brothers; and the white-haired patriarch--at seventy, erect and agile as a boy,--in whose barn we remained to-day, was father, grandfather, or uncle, to the whole tribe. His loyalty was very stanch and intense.

"The Home Guards," said he, "are usually pretty civil. Occasionally they shoot at some of the boys who are hiding; but pretty soon afterward, one of them is found in the woods some morning with a hole in his head! I suppose there are a thousand young men lying out in this county. I have always urged them to fight the Guards, and have helped to supply them with ammunition. Two or three times, regiments from Lee's army have been sent here to hunt conscripts and deserters, and then the boys have to run. I have a son among them; but they never wounded him yet. I asked him the other day: 'Won't you kill some of them before you are ever captured?' 'Well, father,' says he, '_I'll be found a tryin'!_' I reckon he will, too; for he has never gone without his rifle these two years, and he can bring down a squirrel every time, from the top of yon oak you see on the hill."

The barn was beside a public road, and very near the house of a woman whose Rebel sympathies were strong. There was danger that any one entering it might be seen by her or her children, who were running about the yard.

But we held quite a _levée_ to-day. I think we had fifty visitors. We would hear the opening door and stealthy footsteps upon the barn-floor; then a soft voice would ask:

"Friends, are you there?"

We would rise from our bed of hay, and come forward to the front of the loft, to find some member of this great family of friends, who had brought his wife and children to see the Yankees. We would converse with them for a few minutes; they would invariably ask if there was nothing whatever they could do for us, invite us to visit their house by night, and express the warmest wishes for our success. They did this with such perfect spontaneity, with such overflowing hearts, that it touched us very nearly. Had we been their own sons or brothers, they could not have treated us more tenderly. This Christmas may have witnessed more brilliant gatherings than ours; but none, I am sure, warmed by a more self-sacrificing friendship.

[Sidenote: VISITED BY AN OLD FRIEND.]

Among others, we were visited by a conscript, who had been one of our guards at Salisbury. While at the prison, his great portly form would come laboring and puffing up the stairs to our quarters; with flushed face, he would sit down, glance cautiously around to assure himself that none but friends were present, then question us eagerly about the North, and breathe out maledictions against all Confederates.

The Rebels, suspecting him, determined to send him to Lee's army. But he was just then taken with rheumatism, and kept his quarters for six weeks! At last, the day before he was to start for Richmond, he obtained permission of the surgeon to visit the village. He hobbled up the street, groaning piteously; but, after turning the first corner, threw away his crutches, plunged into the woods, and made his way home by night. He now related his experiences with a quiet chuckle, and was very desirous of serving us.

He was able to give me a pair of large boots in place of my own, which lacerated my sore and swollen feet. The sharp rocks, hills, and stumps, compelled me to have the new boots repaired seven times before reaching our lines. Two nights' traveling would quite wear out the ill-tanned leather of the stoutest soles.

To-day, our friends brought us twice as much food as we wanted, and we wanted a great deal. At dark, alarmed by a rumor that the suspicions of the Guard had been excited, they took us several miles into a neighboring county, to a very secluded house, occupied by the wife and daughters of an officer in the Confederate army. Here we spent the night in inviting beds.

[Sidenote: A DAY OF ALARMS.]

IX. _Monday, December 26._

Our hostess, a comely lady of thirty-five, was a second Mrs. Katie Scudder--the very embodiment of "Faculty." Her plain log house, with its snowy curtains, cheap prints, and engravings cut from illustrated newspapers, was tasteful and inviting. Her five daughters, all clothed in fabric spun and woven at home--for these people were now entirely self-dependent--looked as pretty and tidy to uncritical, masculine eyes, as if robed in silk and cashmere.

Our pursuit of a quiet refuge proved ludicrously unsuccessful. The day was diversified by

"More pangs and fears than wars or women have."

But the lady bore herself with such coolness, and proved so ready for every emergency, that we enjoyed them rather than otherwise.

Early in the morning, while standing a few yards from the house, I saw her and her daughter suddenly step into the open doorway, quite filling it with their persons and skirts, and earnestly beckon me to go in out of sight. Of course, I obeyed. A woman of questionable political soundness had called; but they attracted her in another direction, keeping her face turned away from the door, till I was lost to sight.

[Sidenote: READY WIT OF A WOMAN.]

Several parties of Rebel cavalry passed down the road. Breckinridge's army, in the mountains above, had recently dissolved in a great thaw and break-up, and these were the small fragments of ice floating down toward Virginia. A squad of a dozen stopped and entered the house, which was of one story, the length of three large rooms. But the lady kept them in the kitchen, while we were shut in the other end of the building.

Next, the barking dog warned us of approaching footsteps. At her suggestion, we went up into the corn-loft, above our apartment. The new visitor was a neighbor, to whom she owed a bushel of corn, and who, with his ox-cart, had come to collect it. With ready woman's wit, she said to him:

"You know my husband is away. I have no fuel. Won't you go and haul me a load of wood, as a Christmas present?"

Who could resist such a feminine appeal? The neighbor went for the wood, while she came laughing in, to tell us her stratagem. We descended from the corn-loft, and went into a back room, where there were two beds, one large and the other small, with an open door between them. Four of us crept under the large bed, one under the small one; and here we had an experience, ludicrous enough to remember, but not so pleasant to undergo.

[Sidenote: DANGER OF DETECTION FROM SNORING.]

One of our party was an inveterate snorer. Whenever he took a recumbent position, with his head upon the ground or the floor, he would begin snoring like a steam-engine. Like all persons of that class, when reminded of it, he steadfastly vowed that he never snored in all his life! For a time, he regarded our awakening him, with rebuke and caution, as a sorry practical joke.

Thus far, I believe our danger of detection had been greater from this source than from any other. We had always traveled in single file, almost like specters, with our leader thrown out as far ahead as we could keep him in view. Whenever he thought he saw danger, he raised a warning hand; every man passed the sign back to those in his rear, and dropped quietly behind a log, or stepped into the bushes, until the person had passed or the alarm was explained. We walked with softest footsteps, no man coughing, or speaking above his breath. During the day we were often concealed in very public places, only a few feet from the road, where, the ground being covered with snow, we could not hear approaching footsteps.

Now, our musical companion chanced to go under the small bed, and in three minutes we heard his trumpet-tongued snore. At first, we whispered to him; but we might as well have talked to Niagara. If one of us went to him, there was danger that the neighbor, who stood upon the front porch, would see us through the open door; but if we did not, that fatal snore was certain to be heard. So I darted across the room, crept in beside my friend, and kept him well shaken until the danger was over.

At night, the lady told us that more people had come to her house during the day than ever visited it in a month before; and we were marched back through the darkness, to our first place of concealment.

X. _Tuesday, December 27._

In the barn through the whole day. A messenger brought us a note from two late fellow-prisoners, Captain William Boothby, a Philadelphia mariner, and Mr. John Mercer, a Unionist, of Newbern, North Carolina, who had been in duress almost three years. They were now hiding in a barn two miles from us. They escaped from Salisbury two nights later than we, paying the guards eight hundred dollars in Confederate money to let them out.

Thurston at once joined them. During the rest of the journey, we sometimes traveled and hid together for several days and nights; but, when there was special danger, divided into two companies, one keeping twenty-four hours in advance--the smaller the party, the less peril being involved.

Now, for the first time, we began to have some hope of reaching our lines. But the road was still very long, and fraught with many dangers. We examined the appalling list of dead, which I had brought from Salisbury, and talked much of our companions left behind in that living entombment. Remembering how earnestly they longed and prayed for some intelligent, trustworthy voice to bear to the Government and the people tidings of their terrible condition, we pledged each other very solemnly, that if any one of us lived to regain home and freedom, he should use earnest, unremitting efforts to excite sympathy and secure relief for them.

[Sidenote: PROMISES TO AID SUFFERING COMRADES.]

It may not be out of place here to say, that upon reaching the North, before visiting our families, or performing any other duties, we hastened to Washington, and used every endeavor to call the attention of the authorities and the country to the Salisbury prisoners. Before many weeks, all who survived were exchanged; but more than five thousand--upwards of half the number who were taken to Salisbury five months before--were already buried just outside the garrison.

Those five thousand loyal graves will ever remain fitting monuments of Rebel cruelty, and of the atrocious inhumanity of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, who steadfastly refused to exchange these prisoners, on the ground that we could not afford to give the enemy robust, vigorous men for invalids and skeletons, and yet refrained from compelling them to treat prisoners with humanity, by just and discriminating retaliation upon an equal number of Rebel officers, taken from the great excess held by our Government.

[Sidenote: BLIND AND UNQUESTIONING LOYALTY.]

To-day, as usual, we saw a large number of the Union mountaineers. Theirs was a very blind and unreasoning loyalty, much like the disloyalty of some enthusiastic Rebels. They did not say "Unionist," or "Secessionist," but always designated a political friend thus: "He is one of the right sort of people"--strong in the faith that there could, by no possibility, be more than one side to the question. They had little education; but when they began to talk about the Union, their eyes lighted wonderfully, and sometimes they grew really eloquent. They did not believe one word in a Rebel newspaper, except extracts from the Northern journals, and reports favorable to our Cause. They thought the Union army had never been defeated in a single battle. I heard them say repeatedly:

"The United States can take Richmond any day when it wants to. That it has not, thus far, is owing to no lack of power, but because it was not thought best."

They regarded every Rebel as necessarily an unmitigated scoundrel, and every Loyalist, particularly every native-born Yankee, almost as an angel from heaven.

How earnestly they questioned us about the North! How they longed to escape thither! To them, indeed, it was the Promised Land. They were very bitter in their denunciations of the heavy slaveholders, who had done so much to degrade white labor, and finally brought on this terrible war.

They had an abundance of the two great Southern staples--corn-bread and pork. They felt severely the absence of their favorite beverage, and would ask us, with amusing earnestness, if they could get coffee when our armies came. The Confederate substitutes--burnt corn and rye--they regarded with earnest and well-founded aversion.

They were compelled to use thorns for fastening the clothing of the women and children. We distributed among them our small supply of pins, to their infinite delectation. Davis also gladdened the hearts of all the womankind by disbursing a needle to each. A needle nominally represented five dollars in Confederate currency, but actually could not be purchased at any price.

A number of the young men "lying out" desired to accompany us to the North. Some were deserters from the Rebel army; others, more fortunate, had evaded conscription from the beginning of the war. But their lives had been passed in that remote county of North Carolina, and the two hundred and ninety miles yet to be accomplished stretched out in appalling prospective. They saw many lions in the way, and, Festus-like, at the last moment, decided to wait for a more convenient season. It was not from lack of nerve; for some of them had fought Rebel guards with great coolness and bravery.

[Sidenote: A REPENTANT REBEL.]

Our friends feared that one slaveholding Secessionist in the neighborhood might learn of our presence, and betray us. He did ascertain our whereabouts, but sent us an invitation to visit his house, offering to supply all needed food, clothing, and shelter. He said he foolishly acquiesced in the Revolution because at first it seemed certain to succeed, and he wished to save his property; but that now he heartily repented.

Possibly his conversion was partially owing to remorse for having persuaded his two sons to enter the Rebel army. One, after much suffering, had deserted, and was now "lying out" near home. The other, wounded and captured in a Virginia battle, was still in a Northern prison, where he had been confined for many months. The father was very desirous of sending to him a message of sympathy and affection.

[Sidenote: SANGUINE HOPES OF LOYAL MOUNTAINEERS.]

But he was an index of the change which had recently come over Rebel sympathizers in that whole region. The condition of our armies then was not peculiarly promising. We were by no means sanguine that the war would soon terminate. But the loyal mountaineers, with unerring instinct, were all confident that we were near its close, and constantly surprised us by speaking of the Rebellion as a thing of the past. We fancied their wish was father to the thought; but they proved truer prophets than we.