Tom is Hungry—He Learns to "Spoon" by Squads—The Bullet at the Window—Working on the Tunnel—"Rat Hell"—The Risk of the Roll-call—What Happened to Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy—Tom in Libby Prison—Hans Rolf Attends Him—Hans Refuses to Escape—The Flight Through the Tunnel—Free, but How to Stay So?

When the war between the States began, Libby & Son were a thriving firm of merchants in Richmond. They owned a big warehouse, which fronted on Carey Street and extended back over land that sloped down to another street, which occupied all the space between the southern wall of the warehouse and the canal that here bordered the James River. The building was full before the war of that rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray praises in "The Virginians" and which the worn-out lands of the Old Dominion can no longer produce.

The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to eat. The whole South was hungry. When Confederate soldiers were starving, Confederate prisoners could not expect to fatten. Nor was this the only evil thing. The prison was indescribably unclean. The cellar and the lower floor, upon which no prisoners were allowed except in the dining-room in the middle of the floor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats which climbed upstairs at night and nipped mouthfuls of human flesh when they could. There was no furniture. The prisoners slept on the floor, so crowded together that they had to lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all. They had divided themselves into squads and had chosen commanders. Tom found himself assigned to Squad Number Four. The first night, when he had at last sunk into uncomfortable sleep upon the hard floor, he was awakened by the sharp command of the captain of his group:

"Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to spoon! One, two, spoon!"

The squad flopped over, from one weary bruised side to another. It seemed to the worn-out boy that he had just "spooned," when again he waked to hear the queer command and again he flopped. This was a sample of many nights.

On the following morning Tom had one of the narrow escapes of his life. He was leaning against one of the barred windows, looking at the broad valley of the James, when he was suddenly seized violently by the arm and jerked to one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip that had been laid upon it and his knees, sticking through his torn trousers, had been barked against the floor, as he was dragged back, but he turned to the man who had laid hold of him, not with anger, but with thankfulness. For, at the second he had been seized a bullet had whizzed through the window just where his head had been. If he had not been jerked away, the Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended then and there.

If Tom was not angry, the man was. He glared at him.

"You little fool, don't you know better than that?"

When the boy heard himself called a fool, he did become angry, but after all this big person had saved his life, even if he did call him names. So he swallowed his wrath—which is an excellent thing to do with wrath—and answered quite meekly:

"No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look out of the windows?"

"Hasn't anybody told you that?"

"No, sir."

"Then I shouldn't have called you a fool." Tom smiled and nodded in acceptance of the implied apology. "The sentries outside have orders to fire whenever they see anybody at a window. Last week two men were killed that way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when I saw you looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but it's better to be hurt than to be killed. Shake."

The boy wrung the big man's hand and thanked him for his timely aid. They strolled together up and down the big room now deserted by most of its occupants, who had begun below their patient wait for dinner. The man was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking. And he needed an intelligent boy in his business. Just then Colonel Rose's business was to escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel did not think so. Yet it had been often tried and had always failed. When several hundred intelligent Americans are shut up, through no fault of their own, in a most unpleasant prison, with nothing to do, they are quite certain to find something to do by planning an escape and by trying to make the plan a reality. One trouble about the former plans at Libby had been that the whole mass of prisoners had known about them. There must always be leaders in such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had taken the crowd into their confidence. Now there were Confederate spies in the crowd, sham prisoners. The former plots had always been found out. Once or twice they had been allowed to ripen and the first fugitives had found their first free breath their last, for they had stumbled into a trap and had been instantly shot down upon the threshold of freedom. More often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited away without warning and probably shot, while their scared followers had been left to despair. Rose had learned the history of all the past attempts. He planned along new lines. He decided upon absolute secrecy, except for the men who were actually to do the work. This work involved a good deal of burrowing into holes that must be particularly narrow at first and never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get into a hole where a stout man could not go. Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human mole. He had picked Tom Strong for the job. Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy of the plan and asked his aid. Tom's shining eyes threatened to tell how important the talk was.

"Act as though you were uninterested, my boy," Colonel Rose warned him. "Keep your eyelids down. Yawn occasionally."

So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at all his natural appearance. He studied the floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it. He yawned so prodigiously as to attract the attention he was trying to escape. An amateur actor is apt to overact his part. And all the time he was listening with a passionate interest to Colonel Rose's story of the way to freedom. Of course he was glad to try to help make the hope a fact.

That night the work began. The kitchen dining-hall was deserted from 10 P.M. to 4 A.M., so it was selected as the field of operation. Below the kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No opening could be made into that without instant detection. On the same floor with the kitchen and just east of it was the hospital. That room must be avoided too. Below the hospital was an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and all full of squealing rats. It was called "Rat Hell." Outside of it was a small sewer that led to a larger one which passed under the canal and emptied its contents into the James River. These sewers were to be the highway to freedom. The first step must be to get from the kitchen to Rat Hell. To do this it was necessary to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed "S," like this:

The upper end of the secret passage was to open into the kitchen fireplace, the lower into Rat Hell. There were fourteen men in the secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had just one tool, an old knife. One of them owned a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress and sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new use now. It was spread upon the kitchen hearth in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was pulled down upon it. Then the mortar between a dozen bricks at the back of the fireplace was cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out of place. This was done by Major A. G. Hamilton, Colonel Rose's chief assistant. He carefully replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of soot over them. He and Rose crept upstairs, carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them, and slept through what was left of the night. The next day was an anxious time for them. When they went down to the kitchen, where a couple of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to them that the marks of their toil by night were too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody saw what had been done. That night, as soon as the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton again removed the bricks and attacked the stubborn stone behind the fireplace. Fortunately the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were pried out of the loosened mortar.

Now came Tom's chance to serve the good cause. He was a proud boy, a few nights later, when he was permitted to go down to the kitchen with the Colonel and the Major, in order that he might creep into the hole they had made and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air. He laid upon his stomach in the upper part of the reversed "S" and plied the old knife as vigorously as it could be plied without making a tell-tale noise. When he had widened the passage, one of the men took his place in it and drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose in his eagerness got into the opening before the lower part of it had been sufficiently enlarged and stuck there. It was only by a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom finally dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasping for breath. Finally, after many nights, Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen from about a box of food sent a prisoner, had been made into a rope ladder. It was hung from the edge of the hole. The three crept cautiously down to Rat Hell. This haven did not seem much like heaven. With squeals of wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the intruders fled up their ladder. They were no match for a myriad rats. Moreover they feared lest the noise would bring into the basement the sentry whose steps they could hear on the sidewalk outside. So they fled, taking their rope-ladder with them, and again, as ever, they replaced the bricks and painted them with the friendly soot.

The next night, armed this time with sticks of wood, they fought it out with the rats and made them understand their masters had come to stay. Fortunately the fight was short. It was noisy and the sentry came. But when he opened the door from the street and looked into the darkness of the basement, the Union officers were safely hid under the straw and only a few of the defeated rats still squealed. At last the tunnel to the sewer could be begun. Colonel Rose had long since decided, by forbidden, stealthy glances from an upper window, just where it was to be. The measurement made above was now made below, the straw against the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old knife, or what was left of it after its battle with brick and stone, was put to the easier task of digging dirt.

Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before the tunnel was five feet long, the air in it became so foul that candles went out in it. So would the lives of the diggers have gone out if they had stayed in it long. Five of the fifteen now went down each night, so that everybody had two nights' rest out of three. But the progress made was pitifully slow. Man after man was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous pit, almost at his last gasp. Once, when Hamilton had been brought out and was being fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom, the boy whispered:

"Why not fan air into the tunnel?"

Nobody had thought of that obvious plan. Like most great inventions it was simple—when seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at the end of the tunnel fanning air into it with their hats. But even so, many a candle went out and many a digger was pulled out, black in the face and almost dead.

The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to reach the sewer. It sloped too far down. It got below the water-level of the canal. Hamilton was caught in it by the rush of water and almost drowned. So much work had to be done over again. Then came a crushing blow. When the small sewer was finally reached, it proved to be too small for a man to pass through it. But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by bit taken off. When this had been done to within a few feet of the main sewer, two men were detailed to cut their way through. The next night was set as the time for the escape. None of the thirteen slept while the two were cutting away the final obstacle. The thirteen did not sleep the next night either, for it was 36 hours before the two came back with their heartbreaking news. They had found the last few feet of the sewer-lining made of seasoned oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. The poor old knife that had served them so long and so well, could not even scratch the toughened oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had ended in failure.

Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new problem. There were two roll-calls every day, at 9 A.M. and 4 P.M. How were the two absent men to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in one long line and everybody was counted. If the count were two short, there would be swift search for the missing. And the beginning of the tunnel was hidden only by a few bundles of straw. This was before they knew the tunnel was useless, but had they known it they would have been scarcely less anxious, for its discovery would have made all future attempts to escape more dangerous and more doubtful. However, the roll-call problem was safely solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper end of the line and two of them, as soon as they had answered to their own names, dropped back, crouched down, crept behind the backs of many men to the other end of the line, slipped into place, and there answered for the missing men, without detection. In the afternoon, they came very near being caught. Some of the other prisoners thought this was being done just for fun, to confuse the Confederate clerk who called the roll, and thought they would take a hand in the fun too. There was so much dodging and double answering that "Little Ross," the good-humored little clerk, lost his temper and ordered the captives to stand in squads of ten to be counted. By this time he had called the roll half a dozen times, with results varying from minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his order, an order obedience to which would have certainly told the tale of two absentees, he went on to explain why he gave it.

"Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho'; there's eight or ten of you-uns yere that ain't yere."

This remarkable statement brought a shout of laughter from the Confederate guards. The prisoners joined in it. "Little Ross" himself caught the contagion and also began to laugh.

The dreaded order was laughed out of court and forgotten.

The two men crept upstairs early the next morning. The first night daylight had caught them at work, so they had not dared to return, but had stayed and had worked through the 36 hours. They brought back the handle of the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and the depressing news of failure. But men who are fit for freedom do not cease to strive for it. If one road to it is blocked, they seek another. That very day, when the fifteen had gathered together and the two had told their tale, a pallor of despair crept over some of the faces, but it was dispelled by the flush of hope when Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south, we'll go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the vacant lot. We'll begin tonight."

"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from the yard we'd have to come out on the street. There's a gas-lamp there—and a sentry."

"We can put out the lamp and if need be the sentry," Colonel Rose answered, "when we get to them. The thing now is to get there. We have fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my figures are correct. That's a job of a good many nights. This night will see the job begun."

It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate had put in their way and with a big wooden spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with earth, was pulled out, emptied, and returned for a fresh load. A fortnight afterwards the officer who was digging that night made a mistake in levels and came too near the surface, which broke above him. Dismayed, he backed out and reported the blunder. The hole was in plain sight. Discovery was certain if it were not hidden. The story was but half told when Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.

"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the dirt and won't show. Stuff it into the hole so it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"

Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole. There he smeared some more dirt on the dirty blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care, and wriggled back. That morning at sunrise, when they peeked down from their prison windows into the eastern lot, even their straining eyes could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that showed. No casual glance would detect it. Of that they were sure.

Every few days new prisoners were thrust into Libby. Whenever this happened it was the custom that on the first evening they should tell whatever news they could of the outside world and of their own capture to the whole prison community. One morning the keeper of Libby receipted for another captured Yankee and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in the grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially, rather too cordially, to the greetings he received. It soon became understood that he was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee. Now neither side was overproud of the guerillas who infested the borderland, who sometimes called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates, and who did more stealing than fighting. So a rather cold shoulder was turned to the new captive, though the community's judgment upon him was deferred until after he should have been heard that evening. He seemed to try to warm the cold shoulder by a certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts at too familiar conversation. He began to talk to Colonel Rose, who soon shook him off, and to sundry other persons, among whom was Tom. The boy was not mature enough in the ways of the world to get rid of him. Johnson spent some hours with him and bored him to distraction. There was a mean uneasiness about him that repelled Tom. His face, an undeniably Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory, from time to time, but the boy could not place him and finally decided that this was merely a fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself was an unpleasant fact. He peered about and sidled about in a way that might be due only to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like it. He disliked Johnson more and more as the newcomer kept returning to him and growing more confidential. His talk was on various natural enough themes, but it kept veering back to the chances of escape.

"I don't mean to stay in this hole long," Johnson whispered. "Pretty mean-spirited in all these fellows to just hang around here, without even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye say 'bout our trying it on, son?"

The familiar address increased the boy's dislike of the man, but he was too young to realize that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He was old enough, however, to know how to keep his mouth shut about the pending plan for an escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out of him, but in the many half-confidential talks the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him, perhaps he had revealed something after all. Perhaps, however, the newcomer got such information as he did from other men in the secret. Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the plan of escape.

That evening, when he stood in a circle of sitting men to tell his story,—a simple tale of Northern birth, of a Southern home, of belief in the Union, of raising a guerilla company to fight for it, of capture in a raid on a Confederate supply-depot,—the unpleasant memory which had been troubling Tom came back and hammered at his head until suddenly, as if a flashlight had been turned on the scene, he saw himself sprawling on the hearth of Uncle Mose's slave-cabin, with this man's hand clutching his ankle. He was sitting on the floor beside Colonel Rose. He leant against him and whispered:

"That man didn't come from Tennessee. He was overseer on a plantation in Alabama. He 'most captured me once. I b'lieve he's a spy."

Johnson caught the gleam of Colonel Rose's eye fixed upon him. He had seen Tom whisper to him. He faltered, stopped speaking, and sat down. Rose walked across the circle and sat beside him. He had snapped his fingers as he walked and half a dozen men had answered the signal and were now close at hand.

"What did you do before you turned guerilla?" asked Colonel Rose.

"I don't know that that's any of your darned business," said Johnson.

"Answer me."

The stronger man dominated the weaker. The spy sulkily said:

"I kept a general shop in Jonesboro', Tennessee."

"Ever live anywhere else in the South?"

"No."

"Ever do anything else in the South?"

"No, sirree. What's the good of asking such questions?"

The Colonel rose to his feet and said aloud:

"Major Hamilton."

"Here, sir," answered the Major.

"Didn't you live in Jonesboro', Tennessee, before the war?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long?"

"Seven years."

"Who kept the general store there?"

"Hezekiah Butterworth, from Maine."

"Did you know him?"

"Rather. We were chums. He and I left Jonesboro' together to join the army."

"Is this man he?"

Rose pointed to where Jake Johnson sat at his feet, cowering, covering his face with his hands. Other hands not too gently snatched Jake's hands from his face. Hamilton looked at him.

"He's no more Hezekiah Butterworth than he's General Grant."

By this time the whole prison community was crowded about Colonel Rose. The latter called again:

"Mr. Strong."

"Here, sir," Tom's voice piped up.

"Do you know this man?"

"Yes, sir." Tom told the story of Jake Johnson on the Izzard plantation.

There was an ominous low growl from the audience. Yankee overseers of Southern plantations were not exactly popular in that crowd of Northern officers. And evidently this particular overseer had been lying. But Colonel Rose lifted his hand and said:

"Silence. No violence. What we do will be done decently and in order." After this impressive speech, he suddenly yelled: "Ah, you would, would you?" and choked Johnson with every pound of strength he could put into the process. He had just seen him slip a bit of paper into his mouth and he meant to know what that paper was. It was plucked out of the spy's throat as he gasped for air. Upon it the spy's pencil had written:

"Plot to escape. Lieutenant Strong knows about it. Think Colonel Rose heads it."

It was to have been Jake Johnson's first report in his new business of being a spy. It put an end to all business on his part forever. Gagged and tied, he was pushed across the big room, while Tom watched uncomprehendingly, wondering what was to be done with the writhing man. Suddenly he understood, for he saw it done. Johnson was pushed into a window. Two kneeling men held his legs and another, standing beside him but screened by the wall, pushed him in front of the window. The Confederate sentry below obeyed his orders. There was no challenge, no warning. He aimed and fired at the prisoner who was breaking the laws of the prison by looking out of the window. What had been Jake Johnson, Yankee, negro-overseer, Confederate conscript, volunteer spy, fell in a dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag and bonds were quickly removed, so there was nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause of the man's death when they came to remove the body. They had unwittingly executed their own spy.

It was right that the man should die, but the shock of seeing him done to death was too much for Tom. Weakened by the fatigues and hardship of the long captivity during which he had been carried from Ohio to Virginia and worn out by the sufferings of life in Libby and by the toil of the tunnel, the boy collapsed when Jake Johnson did and for a few moments seemed as dead as the man was. He was taken to the hospital-room, but the hospital in Libby was usually only the anteroom of the graveyard at Libby. One of the scarcest things in the Confederacy, the home of scarcity, was a good doctor. The armies in the field needed far more doctors than there were in the whole South, at the outbreak of the war. Medical schools were quickly created, but the demand for doctors so far outran the supply that by this time ignorant country lads were being rushed through the schools, with reckless haste, so that they were graduated when they knew but little more than when they began. A so-called surgeon was handling his scalpel six months after he had been handling a plow. Some of them barely knew how to read and write. It was inevitable that the prison hospitals should be manned by the poorest of the poor among the graduates of these wretched schools. A fortunate chance, fortunate that is for Tom, gave him, however, care that was both skilful and tender.

A few hours after the righteous execution of Jake Johnson there had been thrust into Libby a fresh group of prisoners, captured but fortyeight hours before. Among them towered a jovial, bearded giant, an army surgeon, Major Hans Rolf. Libby was ringing of course with talk of what had happened there that day. The new prisoners quickly heard of Johnson and of Tom Strong. Within an hour, Hans Rolf had given his parole not to try to escape and had been allowed to station himself beside Tom's bed. Through that night and through the next day, he fought Tom's battle for him, doing all that man could do. When the boy struggled out of his delirium and saw Rolf's kind eyes beaming upon him, his first thought was that he was still in the clutches of Wilkes Booth in the railroad car. His right hand plucked feebly at his left side, where he had then carried the dispatches Booth sought. Hans Rolf saw and understood the movement.

"It's all right, Tom," he said. "Everything's all right. Go to sleep."

And Tom, still a bit stupefied, thought everything was all right and that he was home in New York, with Rolf somehow or other there too. A gracious and beautiful Richmond woman, who gave her days to caring for her country's enemies, bent over him with a smile. The boy's eyes gleamed with a mistaken belief.

"Oh, Mother!" gasped Tom. He smiled back and sank gently into a profound sleep, from which he awoke to life and health. Again a Hans Rolf had saved a Tom Strong's life.

Night after night passed, one night of work by each man followed by two of such rest as lying spoon fashion upon a hard floor allowed. On the seventeenth night of the new tunnel work, Colonel Rose was digging away in it. It was over fifty feet long. His candle flickered and went out. The foul air closed in upon him. Hats were fanning to and fro, back in Rat Hell, fifty feet away, but the fresh air did not reach him. He felt himself suffocating. With one last effort he thrust his strong fists upward and broke through the surface. Soon revived by the rush of fresh air into the tunnel, he dragged himself out and found himself in the yard that had been their aim. The tunnel had reached its goal. He climbed out and studied the situation. A high fence screened the yard from Libby. A shed with an easily opened door screened it from the street. At three A.M., February 6, 1864, Colonel Rose returned to prison.

That morning he told his news. Most of the men wanted to try for freedom the next night, but there was much to do to erase all traces of their work, so that, if the tunnel were not forthwith discovered after their flight, it could be used later by other fugitives. With a rare unselfishness, they waited for sixty hours. Meanwhile each of the fifteen had been authorized to tell one other man, so that thirty in all could make their escape together. Colonel Rose felt that this was the limit. A general prison-delivery would, he believed, result in a general recapture. Such a secret, however, was too mighty to keep. a whisper of it spread through the prison.

When Hans Rolf had saved Tom's life, he had been at once taken into the inner councils of the tunnel group. He had not expressed as much joy in the plan as Tom had expected. The reason of this was now revealed. He declined to go.

"You see," he explained to Colonel Rose and Tom, "I gave my parole not to try to escape when Tom here was sick. I had to do so in order to be allowed to take care of him. I made up my mind not to ask to be relieved from it because if I had the Confeds. might have suspected some plan to escape was on hand. And they seem to have forgotten all about it, for they haven't cancelled it. So you see I'm bound in honor not to go. Don't bother, Tom." The boy's face showed the agony he felt that Hans Rolf's kindness to him should now bar Hans Rolf's way to freedom. "Don't bother. 'Twon't be long before I'll be exchanged. And p'raps I can save some lives here by staying. Don't bother. It's all right. I rather like this boarding-house."

The giant's great laugh rang out. The heartiness of it amazed the weary men scattered about the room. It brought smiles to lips that had not smiled for many a day. Laughter that comes from a clean heart does good to all who hear it.

It was clear that Rolf could not go. He was an officer and a gentleman. Honor forbade it. Sadly, Tom left him.

On Tuesday evening, February 9, 1864, when the chosen thirty had crawled down the inverted "S" and the rope-ladder to Rat Hell, Col. H. C. Hobart, who knew the secret, but had gallantly offered to stay behind, so that he could replace the tell-tale bricks in the fireplace, replaced them. But before he could get upstairs, some hundreds of men had come down. The secret was a secret no longer. There was a fierce struggle to get to the fireplace, a struggle all the fiercer because it had to be made in grim silence, for there was a sentry but a few feet away, on the other side of the wall, in the hospital. The bricks were taken out again. In all, one hundred and nine Union officers got through the hole. Then, warned by approaching daylight, the less fortunate in the fight for freedom put back the bricks and crept stealthily upstairs, resolved to try their luck the next night, if the tunnel were not before that discovered.

Tom had wormed his way through the inverted "S" among the first fifteen. On the rope ladder he lost his hold and fell in a heap upon the floor of Rat Hell. The huge rodents swarmed upon him, squealing and biting. He almost shrieked with the horror of it, but he sprang to his feet, threw off his tormentors, and ran across the room to the opening of the tunnel. His ragged clothes were still more ragged and his face and hands were bleeding from rat-bites, but he cared nothing for all this. Was he not on his way to freedom? On his way, yes; but the way was a long one. He might never reach the end. When he had pushed and pulled himself through the tunnel; when he had come out into the yard and gone through the shed; and when, at the moment the sentry in the canal street was at the further end of his beat, he had slipped out of the doorway and turned in the opposite direction,—when all this had happened, he was out of prison, to be sure, but he was in the heart of the enemy's country, with all the risks of recapture or of death still to be run.

The men had all been cautioned to stroll away in a leisurely fashion, on no account to run or even to walk fast, and not to try to get away in groups of more than two or three. It was hard to walk slowly to the next corner. The boy made himself do so, however. Half a block ahead of him on the side street, he saw a couple of men walking with a somewhat faster stride. He hurried ahead to join them. A Confederate patrol turned the corner of Carey Street. He heard the two men challenged and he heard the little scuffle as they were seized. Their brief moment of freedom had passed. He stepped to one side of the wooden sidewalk and crawled under it. There was just space enough for him to lie at full length. Hurrying feet, the feet of men hunting other men, trampled an inch above his nose. His heart beat so that he thought it must be heard. The patrol reached the street along the canal and peered into the darkness there, a darkness feebly fought by one flickering gas-lamp. Fortunately, nobody came out of the shed just then. The sentry happened to be coming towards it and the men inside were waiting for him to turn. The patrol had no thought of a general jail-delivery. It turned back with its two prisoners, tramped back over Tom's head to Carey Street, and took its captives to the prison. The boy crawled out from under the sidewalk as the next batch of fugitives, three of them, reached the corner. He ran down to them and warned them of the Carey Street patrol. The three men turned with him and walked along the canal. It was just after midnight. Not a soul was stirring. Not a light showed. As they walked unquestioned, their spirits rose. How fine to be free.