“I travelled nearly all that night again. Towards morning I lay by in a canebrake, and slept a little. It was raining hard. The next day I started on again. As I was crossing a road, suddenly a man came round a steep bank, on horseback. I didn’t see him until he was right upon me. I felt desperate. He asked me some question, and I gave him a surly answer. I thought I wouldn’t leave the road until he had gone on; but he checked his horse, and rode along by my side.
“’You look like you are in trouble,’ he said.
“’I am,’ I said.
“’Can I be of any service to you?’
“’Yes. I want to go to Crawford’s Station. How far is it?’
“He said it was three miles, and told me the way to go. Crawford’s is only fifteen miles from Macon; so you see I had not got far whilst running from the dogs.
“Suddenly a terrible impulse took me. I turned upon him; I felt fierce; I could have murdered him, if necessary.
“’I told you a lie,’ said I. ‘I am not going to Crawford’s. I am a Federal soldier trying to escape.’
“He turned pale. ‘I am the provost-marshal of this district,’ he said, after we had looked each other full in the face for about a minute, ‘and do you know it is my duty to arrest you?’
“Then a power came upon me such as I never felt before in my life; and I talked to him. I laid open the whole question of the war with a clearness and force which astonishes me now when I think of it. I believe I convinced him. Then I told him that if I had been doing my duty, it was his duty to help me escape, instead of arresting me. And then I prophesied:—‘This war is going to end,’ I said; ‘and it is going to end in only one way. As true as there is a heaven above us, your Confederate Government is going to be wiped from the earth; and then where will you be? then what will you think of the duty of one man to arrest another whose only fault is that he has been fighting for his country? The time is coming, sir, when it may make a mighty difference with you, whether you help me now, or send me to a Rebel prison.’