“It may not be delivered, but I took a chance at it.”
The boys asked many other questions, but the old man would not talk and told the boys it was high time to go to sleep.
In the morning he told them that they were all to walk down toward the mouth of the Yazoo.
“We may camp there somewhere to-night,” he said, “and we may come back. We’ll put plenty of lunch in our pockets, but we leave all our stuff right here.”
They did not have to walk all the way. Various conveyances were going in their direction. It turned out that Barker didn’t really want to go to the mouth of the Yazoo; instead he took his party several miles farther close to the bank of the Mississippi, about a mile above the place where the Union line touched the river. Here they made camp under a clump of low trees and Barker went to a neighboring farm house for a jug of water.
“We might as well eat,” Barker suggested when he returned. “You boys must be hungry as wolves after our long tramp this afternoon.”
“May we build a fire?” the boys asked.
“No, I think we had better not,” the old man replied. “It might attract some visitors that we don’t want to-night.”
In the far North, the midsummer twilights last a long time. Along the international boundary one can read in the open until nine o’clock, but in the South, daylight passes quickly into night.
When the four travelers had finished their supper it was dark.