For that night it was nothing but putting one foot before another, hour after hour, at first eagerly, and at the end only with the dull intent to keep it up till sunrise. At sunrise we passed over a black creek, through a bit of cypress swamp, and into a great pine wood on either side of the road. And here we left the road for a secret, sunny spot to sleep in, finding it well enough, for the wood was full of open spaces, and bottomed over with ridges and hollows of sand. We were too leg-weary to talk, and only munched biscuits, blinking and drowsing. And, when I woke again, the sun was far around and one of my ears full of sand. Now Calhoun and I fell to talking--or he talked and I grunted mostly, with the pains in me; and it came upon me that we were in no small boy's trouble, and that, if we ever got out, I might ask people to call me a man and very likely they would. “Somebody's after us hard just now, I take it,” said Calhoun, “unless they're all gone steamboating. It would be a good thing to get north of the Potomac, Bennie Ben, and the longer we're in Virginia the hotter it will be. For see here, now! Suppose the whole Confederacy gets to frothing at the mouth, and cavorting round like a crazy elephant, and shouting, 'Who did up Cavarly? Ben Cree. Who messed his compass? Ben Cree. Where's Ben Cree? In Virginia.' And suppose the Confederacy comes stamping all over Virginia after you, neglecting the war shameful. What! Maybe they'd ask for me, too? Why, then we get out of this. That's our point.” I was so stiff with the night's tramp, and lame, so tied about and shot through with queer pains, coming from exposure, that I walked but a few steps, and fell down, and could not rise for the knots in my leg-muscles. “I'm dead lame, Calhoun,” I said with a sob. “There's an awful pain going through me. I can't tramp again.” He came back and lifted me, putting his arm under my shoulder and saying, “Why, you're a good man, Bennie, but we pushed hard last night,” and so helped me slowly through the wood. It is oftentimes, in cities and among comfortable folk, that one hears talk of friendship; but I notice that, in the famous examples of this thing in old times, it always lay between men who saw trouble together, and maybe the open sky at night, and knew what it was to be two alone among enemies. For the man that you have been hungry with, and weary, and frightened, and comforted is never like other men to you again. And, though I suppose men may have friendship for each other for pleasant companionship, and that may be one kind; still, when they have walked together in narrow ways of fortune there comes to be another bond which is quite different. So much we were thinking of this new trouble and what would come of it, that we hardly looked before us on coming to the road till someone shouted quite near; and there were a mule team, resting in the shadow, a loaded waggon, and at either end Tommy Todd and the old, bent negro, Turpentine.