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“What do you want?” they asked him, seeing how cool he was.

“Don’t you want a guide?” he asked, drawlingly.

“Who are you?” inquired the corporal in charge. He paused.

“Some calls me a d’serter,” he said, slowly.

The men all looked at him curiously.

“Well, what do you want?”

“I thought maybe as you wanted a guide,” he said, quietly.

“We don’t want you. We’ve got all the guide we want,” answered the corporal, roughly, “and we don’t want any spies around here either, you understand?”

“Does he know the way? All the creeks is up now, an’ it’s sort o’ hard to git erlong through down yonder way if you don’t know the way toller’ble well?”

“Yes, he knows the way too–every foot of it–and a good deal more than you’ll see of it if you don’t look out.”

“Oh! That road down that way is sort o’ stopped up,” said the man, as if he were carrying on a connected narrative and had not heard him. “They’s soldiers on it too a little fur’er down, and they’s done got word you’re a-comin’ that a-way.”

“What’s that?” they asked, sharply.

“Leastways it’s stopped up, and I knows a way down this a-way in and about as nigh as that,” went on the speaker, in the same level voice.

“Where do you live?” they asked him.

“I lives back in the pines here a piece.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“About twenty-three years, I b’leeves; ‘ats what my mother says.”

“You know all the country about here?”

“Ought to.”

“Been in the army?”

“Ahn–hahn.”

“What did you desert for?”

Darby looked at him leisurely.

“‘D you ever know a man as ‘lowed he’d deserted? I never did.” A faint smile flickered on his pale face.

He was taken to the camp before the commander, a dark, self-contained looking man with a piercing eye and a close mouth, and there closely questioned as to the roads, and he gave the same account he had already given. The negro guide was brought up and his information tallied with the new comer’s as far as he knew it, though he knew well only the road which they were on and which Darby said was stopped up. He knew, too, that a road such as Darby offered to take them by ran somewhere down that way and joined the road they were on a good distance below; but he thought it was a good deal longer way and they had to cross a fork of the river.

There was a short consultation between the commander and one or two other officers, and then the commander turned to Darby, and said:

“What you say about the road’s being obstructed this way is partly true; do you guarantee that the other road is clear?”

Darby paused and reflected.

“I’ll guide you,” he said, slowly.

“Do you guarantee that the bridge on the river is standing and that we can get across?”

“Hit’s standing now, fur as I know.”

“Do you understand that you are taking your life in your hand?”

Darby looked at him coolly.

“And that if you take us that way and for any cause–for any cause whatsoever we fail to get through safe, we will hang you to the nearest tree?”

Darby waited as if in deep reflection.

“I understand,” he said. “I’ll guide you.”

The silence that followed seemed to extend all over the camp. The commander was reflecting and the others had their eyes fastened on Darby. As for him, he sat as unmoved as if he had been alone in the woods.

“All right,” said the leader, suddenly, “it’s a bargain: we’ll take your road. What do you want?”

“Could you gi’me a cup o’ coffee? It’s been some little time since I had anything to eat, an’ I been sort o’ sick.”

“You shall have ’em,” said the officer, “and good pay besides, if you lead us straight; if not, a limb and a halter rein; you understand?”

A quarter of an hour later they were on the march, Darby trudging in front down the middle of the muddy road between two of the advance guard, whose carbines were conveniently carried to insure his fidelity. What he thought of, who might know?–plain; poor; ignorant; unknown; marching every step voluntarily nearer to certain and ignominious death for the sake of his cause.