But now the boys were awake, and Jack had to give them warning to make no noise. Yes, there was food, plenty. Cooked bacon, hoe-cake, and cold chicken, boiled eggs, and, to Barney's immeasurable joy, sorghum whisky. The hunger of the invaders satisfied, each provided himself with a sack to feed the waiting comrades; and while this was going on they extracted from the now reassured negroes that the spot was just behind Warick Creek, near Lee's Mills; that parties of rebels from the fort at Yorktown had been at work building lines of earthworks, and that every now and then Yankees came across and skirmished in the woods a mile or two up in the direction whence Jack had come. The cabin was only a step from the main road, upon which the rebels were encamped—a regiment or more. Some Yankee prisoners had been captured early in the morning, and were in the block-house, a short distance up the road.
"Can you lead us near the block-house?" Jack asked.
"I reckon I can; but ef I do they'll shu' ah' find it out, and den I'se don, 'cos Marsa Hinton—he's in de cavalry—he'll guess dat it was me dat tuk you 'uns dar."
"Do you want to be free? Do you want to go into the Union lines?"
"Free! oh, de Lor', free! O marsa captain, don't fool a ole man. Free!
I'd rudder be free dan—dan go to Jesus—almost."
"Have you a wife—are these your children?"
"My ole woman is up at Marsa Hinton's; she's de nuss gal. Dese is my boys; yes, sah."
"Very well; we're going into the Union lines. You know the country hereabouts. Help us to find our friends in the swamp, and we will take you all with us," Jack said; but feeling a good deal of compunction, as he was not so sure that the freedom bestowed upon these guileless friends might not, for a time at least, be more of a hardship than their happy-go-lucky servitude. Meanwhile, in the expansion of renewed hopes and full stomachs, no watch had been kept on the outside; a tallow dip had been lighted, and the whole party busied in getting together such necessaries as could be carried. One of the boys, passing the door, uttered a stifled cry:
"Somebody comin' from de road."
"Where can we hide? Don't put out the light; that will look suspicions!" Jack whispered, making for the window in the rear, "Is there a cellar, or can we get on the roof?" But the dark group were too terrified to speak. They ran in a mob to the doorway, luckily the most adroit manoeuvre they could hit upon, for with the dip flaring in the current of air, the room was left in darkness. Jack and Barney slipped through the low lattice, and by means of a narrow shed reached the low roof. They could hear the tramp of horses, how many they could not judge, and then a gruff voice demanding: