I was once more doomed to be mistaken. We were approaching Knoxville. A haggard-looking, rough-bearded fellow leaned over and whispered in my ear, “This isn’t a good country for you and me. They’re all tories here, every d——d scoundrel of them. I’ve been chased off from my home because I had been in the Confederate army. For three weeks I’ve dodged about in the woods, and now I’m a going to get out of this Yankee country. But you had better keep mighty quiet; they’ll suspect you quicker’n me.” I advised my confidential friend to get further South as fast as possible, and the last I saw of him he was making a rush, in Knoxville, for the Dalton and Atlanta cars. * * * * * Burnt houses and solitary chimneys over one whole quarter of the city, showed that the heart of East Tennessee loyalty had not been without its sufferings. The best part, however, of the little city seemed to be saved. Straggling up and down hill, stretching off to the precipitous banks of the clear, sparkling river that skirts it, with few pretensions to elegance in its stony streets or old-fashioned architecture, but with a great deal of homely substantial comfort, Knoxville is a very fit capital for the mountain region of East Tennessee. It seemed prosperous, and likely, under the new order of things, to continue to prosper. Its people had not been accustomed to depend for support upon their slaves; they suffered the less, therefore, from the sudden disappearance of slaves. Land-owners in the vicinity held their property at enormous prices; the people had plenty; and, in a rude way, they lived very comfortably. For a time there had been a strong conflict between Unionists and their former oppressors. Men who had been driven from their homes or half-starved in the mountains, or hunted for with dogs, were not likely to be very gentle in their treatment of the men who persecuted them; and one readily believed what all observers said, that in no place through the South had the bitterness of feeling, engendered by the war, been so intense, or the violence so bloody in its consequences. Returned Rebels had not unfrequently been notified that they must leave the country, under penalty of being treated precisely as they had treated Union men when they had the power. Sometimes they were shot before such notification; sometimes after it; when, in a foolhardy spirit, they remained to brave it out.