I said that such had been my own opinion when I first saw him, for he was the very ideal of a magnificent Southern gentleman, but that I had afterwards learned that though he was a spy and secret agent, it was on the Union side, and that he was high in the confidence of our officers, adding that I had seen the same man in our camp again, but had not spoken to him after the first occasion. "Well," continued Mitchel, "he was, and is, a spy, and has been of great service to us. But I sometimes fear that we may have trusted him a little too far. Our boys are now in Georgia with him." I sprang up from my seat. This was startling news. It had, indeed, been asserted by the camp-fires--where all events are discussed, and where conjectures too often pass for facts--that the missing men had turned spies, but I had scouted the idea. I thought that at most they might have been sent on ahead of us a short distance, to seize some important post in connection with similar details from other regiments, and supported by cavalry. But we were a hundred and fifty miles from the nearest point of the Georgian State line. I looked at my companion in astonishment, and exclaimed, "What on earth are they doing in Georgia?" "Andrews has taken them there," he said, "disguised as Southern citizens, with the intention of capturing a railroad train. He has also engaged a Southern man, who is an engineer on the same railroad, to run their locomotive, and when they get their train they will start for our line and burn every bridge they pass over. They will cut all the telegraph wires, and thus leave the enemy in helpless rage behind them."