The sun went down, and night came on,--deep, calm, and clear. One by one the stars twinkled into light. I gazed upon their beauty with new feelings, as I wondered whether a few more suns might not set me free from the short story of earthly things and make me a dweller beyond the sky. A spirit of prayer and the faint beginnings of trust stirred within me. Hitherto I had been looking at passing events alone, and refusing to contemplate the great new experiences death would open. But now my thoughts took a new direction. God was helping me, and inclining my heart upward. I was to pass through many more terrible scenes and taste bitter sorrows before I could recognize His voice and fully repose on His love. I was not then a member of church nor a professor of religion. I believed the doctrines of Christianity, and purposed some day to give them practical attention. It had been easy to postpone this purpose, and, latterly, the confusion and bustle of camp-life had almost driven the subject out of my mind. But now God appeared very near, and, even amid foes and dangers, I seemed to have hold of some hand, firm but kind, beyond the reach of vision. What influence was most powerful in turning my thoughts upward I cannot tell,--whether it was the familiar outlines of the grand constellations, the quiet and stillness all around, so congenial to exhausted nature after the excitement of the last few days, or a yet more direct message from the Highest,--I only know that the memory of that evening, when I was carried, chained, down the long hill to the valley in which Chattanooga lies, there to meet an unknown fate, is one of the sweetest of my life. My babbling guards had subsided into silence, and, as we wended along through the gathering darkness, high and noble thoughts of the destiny of man filled my breast, and death appeared only a mere incident of existence,--the gate out of one department of being into another. I was nerved for any fate. It may be thought strange that in these moments of reflection and spiritual yearning I had no feeling of remorse for any of the deceptions of which I had been guilty. But I had not. It did not even occur to me to consider them as sins at all. If necessary or expedient I would then have added to them the sanction of an oath with equal recklessness. Some sophistry--felt rather than reasoned out--about the lawfulness of deceiving or injuring public enemies or rebels in any possible way--a conviction that they had forfeited everything, even their right to be told truth--must have controlled me. Before starting on this expedition I had placed the highest value on truth, and would have regarded a wilful lie with scorn and loathing. But I accepted deception as one of the incidents of the enterprise, and all sense of its wrongfulness passed away, and did not return until long afterwards.