"We made certain of the direction the river current ran, and started southward in high hopes, although the temptation to go northward to our friends was very strong. We now wanted a boat, and, not long after we started, fortune had another pleasant surprise in store for us, for we came upon a skiff safely moored, with lock and chain, to a tree. After carefully inspecting the surroundings to see that no prying eyes were peering on us, we 'loosened' the lock with a stone, and in a few minutes after were smoothly gliding down the current of the great river, and I doubt if two more joyful mortals ever navigated a canoe than we two, with that stolen little craft. "What a happy change! Our weary limbs and painful feet now had a rest, and yet we were gliding noiselessly on our journey. What wonderful teachers hardship and stern necessity are! Discontented mortals do not half appreciate the blessings they have until they have been pupils in the school of adversity. I felt as if this chilly night's ride, in a little stolen boat, on a strange river, whose shores were hidden by Plutonian shadows, was the best and most grateful that I ever had, or ever expected to enjoy. "We pulled off our old boots and bathed our lacerated feet in the water, and quenched the tormenting thirst caused by the indigestible hard corn, which was now our only nourishment. We kept our paddles pretty busy, as we wished to get as far away as possible from where we took the boat before the dawn of day. When daylight began to appear, we paddled our craft into a bayou, safe from view, and secreted ourselves in a thicket for the day. "Four days and nights had now passed since we had eaten food, except the morsel of corn-bread we brought out of the prison. We lay down to sleep the day away, but between our great hunger and the swarms of mosquitoes we could get but little rest. I could, while sleeping, see in my dreams tables spread and groaning with loads of good things to eat; bread, meat, cheese, coffee, biscuit, and butter were all within my reach, and were vanishing before my ravenous appetite, when, in the midst of the great pleasures of this feast, I would suddenly waken to a sense of the reality of the case, and what a maddening disappointment I would feel. With this disturbed sort of rest we worried through the day, the demands of hunger and our stomachs getting the better of nature's demand for rest, until at last we grew desperate, and at early twilight, in the evening, pulled out of the little bayou, determined on a raid of some sort on a house for food. "We spied a house some distance from the river-bank, which we thought from appearances we could capture with a plausible story or by force.