"Lawd bress Marse Linkum's sojer boys! Youse boun' to whop de rebels, honey; I know you is, kase Ise praying for you free times a day, like Dan'l in de lion's den."
"I certainly hope you'll not get into any trouble through what you have done for us to-night," said hard-hearted Ben, who was moved in spite of himself by these expressions of sympathy.
"So far as I know, our blacks are all loyal," answered Ned, "but it won't do to trust some negroes too far, any more than it will do to trust some white people; and when we are in the presence of Tom Randolph I wish you would be careful not to——"
He stopped suddenly, but it was too late. He had committed himself. As he afterward told his friend Rodney, he came near ruining everything before he thought what he was doing.
"There you have it!" exclaimed Ben angrily. "Why do you try to befriend that man Randolph, when you dare not trust him for fear that he will set your rebel neighbors against you? He shall never go free with my consent, and that is a word with a bark on it."
"Or are you afraid that he will get his Home Guards together and burn you out, to pay you for what you have done for us Yankees?" said the corporal. "I don't believe there's a Home Guard in the world that will do to tie to, and I think the best thing we can do is to hold fast to that fellow. If he's done us half the damage he says he has, he is a prize."
Ned's common sense told him that words would not rectify the big mistake he had made, so he dropped Tom Randolph, entirely, and talked of the hounds and the risk his Yankee friends would incur if they tried to make their way to the Mississippi through the comparatively open country that lay before them. There were not woods enough to conceal their movements; the people along the route were mostly rebels, and they could hardly help meeting someone who would put their pursuers on their track if he saw half a chance. What they needed more than anything else during the rest of their journey was a guide known to be a good Confederate, but friendly enough to Yanks to help them out of trouble if they got into it. The two fugitives did not think they were likely to fall into such trouble as Ned hinted at, but the next day they were obliged to confess that he knew what he was talking about.
By this time they had reached the fence that ran across the end of the lane and shut it off from the woods, and there Ben and the corporal stopped as if expecting something. It came presently in the shape of the challenge given in low tones:
"Who comes there?"