Vague rumors were current around the camp-fires and home-circles that the whole party had been executed. Friends began to despair. Strangers began to inquire as if for missing friends. A universal sympathy prevailed in their behalf, and whole communities were excited to the wildest fervor on account of the lost adventurers. The widely-read letters from the Steubenville _Herald's_ army correspondent were missed, for PITTENGER wrote no more. The family were in an agony of suspense for the silent, absent son and brother. His ever faithful friend, Chaplain GADDIS, of the Ohio Second, made an effort to go, under a flag of truce, in search of the party, but was dissuaded by the commanding officers from so hopeless an undertaking. The summer passed, and yet no tidings came. The autumn came with its melancholy,--and uncertain rumors, like withered, fallen leaves, were again afloat about the camps and the firesides. The dreary winter came, and still the hearts of the most hopeful were chilled with disappointment. The father began to think of William as dead,--the mother to talk of her darling as one who had lived,--the children to speak of their elder brother as one they should never see any more until all the lost loved ones meet in the better land. The writer was even solicited by a mutual friend to preach the funeral sermon of one whose memory was still dear, but whom none of us ever hoped to see again on earth. But our Father in heaven was kinder than we thought. Our prayers had been heard! As our fervent petitions winged up from family altars to the ear of the Infinite Lover, the guardian angels winged afar downward through battle alarms, and ministered to him for whom we besought protection. When the bright spring days came smiling over the earth, a message came from the hand of the missing one, brighter and sunnier to our hearts than the April sunlight on the hills! Soon the story was told, and we all thanked God for the merciful deliverance of him for whom we prayed, and who had found, even in a dismal prison-cell, the Pearl of great price! The one we loved returned home a witness of the Spirit that came to him as a Comforter in his dreariest loneliness, and is already a minister of the precious Gospel that gladdened him in the time of his tribulation. And now the reader shall know all about the tedious delay and the long silence, from the pen of him who survives to tell the story. We commend to all who peruse this narrative an interesting volume, entitled "_Beyond the Lines_," another sad rehearsal of terror in rebel prisons and Southern swamps, in other portions of the Confederacy--the experience of Rev. Capt. J. J. GEER, now one of Lieutenant PITTENGER'S associate-advocates for liberty in the pulpit, as he was recently a brother-bondman in the land of tyranny and death. A. C. PHILADELPHIA, September 15, 1863. DARING AND SUFFERING. CHAPTER I.