“That is not all,” continued Mrs. Osborne, in a broken voice. “After all this had happened, the scoundrel had the effrontery to renew his suit, and say if Emma would marry him he would see that Mr. Osborne was released; that he had powerful political friends who could accomplish this. We spurned his proposition as it deserved. I knew my husband would rather rot in prison than consent to such a monstrous thing.”
“Oh! had I known! had I known!” exclaimed Calhoun, pacing up and down the room in his excitement; “but we may meet again.”
Little did Calhoun think that before many days they would meet again, and that that meeting would nearly mean for him the ignominious death of a spy. A few days after his return from Columbia, he asked the permission of Morgan to visit Nashville. “I would like to see,” said he, “what our friends, the enemy, are doing in that city.”
Morgan shook his head. “I don’t want to see you hanged,” he replied.
But Calhoun argued so zealously, that at last Morgan’s scruples were overcome, and he gave his [pg 165]consent, but added, “If you should be captured and executed, I would never forgive myself.”
Calhoun looked upon it as a mere holiday affair; he had passed through too many dangers to be terrified. Taking half a dozen of his trusty scouts with him, he had no trouble in reaching the Cumberland River a few miles above Nashville. The few scouting parties of the enemy they met were easily avoided. He ordered his scouts to remain secreted in a thick wood near by a friendly house, from which they could obtain food for themselves and provender for their horses.
“If I am not back in three days,” said he, “return to Morgan, and tell him I have been captured.”
His men pleaded with him to let at least one of them accompany him, but this he refused, saying it would but add to his danger.
From the gentleman who resided in the nearby house he secured a skiff which had been kept secreted from the lynx-eyed Federals. In this Calhoun proposed to float down to Nashville.
Night came dark and cloudy. It was just such a night as Calhoun wished. Clad in a suit of citizen’s clothes, and with muffled oars, he bade his comrades a cheerful good night, and pushed out into the river, and in a moment the darkness had swallowed him up. He floated down as noiselessly as a drifting stick.