"Were you really afraid of being found out, Frank?" I queried. "Did you consider yourself in much danger?"
With great emphasis he answered, "No money could hire me to put myself in such a position again. I would have run away if we had been obliged to stay much longer."
This man was as brave as any human being. I had seen him perfectly cool and serene under circumstances of great danger, when every one else in the company betrayed some sign of fear. I did not suspect him of exaggerating the perils of the situation in which he was placed, and, having a deep personal interest in the matter, I put the question bluntly,—
"If men should be wanted to try this thing again, would you not go?"
"Never!" was the unequivocal response. "If Andrews and Mitchel want bridges burned, they can go themselves and burn them! I will do my duty as a soldier, but as to going out among those——"
The terms applied, and the energy given to the accompanying description of the horror of being alone among blood-thirsty enemies, feeling that, sleeping or waking, a rope was around one's neck, just ready to be tightened on the utterance of a single careless word, it is not necessary to transcribe here.
"But why did not that man come to help you? Did you find out anything about him?"
"Andrews told us, on the third day after we had reached Atlanta, that he had heard through some of the railway officials that the engineer had been transferred to the Mobile and Ohio Railroad to help in running troops to Corinth" (this was a short time before the battle of Shiloh). "But my own opinion is that the man got scared and had himself transferred there to get out of a bad scrape."
"But how did Andrews take this disappointment?"
"He was very much cast down. He asked each of us if we had ever been engineers or firemen. But no one had ever occupied such a position. He hated terribly to give up; but, as nothing more could be done, he at last told us we might work our way back to camp."