The most of the way I enjoyed my journey finely. Sometimes I would lay over several days, on account of rain and bad roads. Wherever I stopped I found something to interest me. I made it a point to make myself as interesting and agreeable to the people that entertained me as possible. I spent three weeks in Florida. There I found the people more disheartened than anywhere else in my route; in fact, resistance to the Federal army had been given up. During my stay there I spent several days with a planter by the name of Fanshaw, who lives near the coast, at St. Marks. He was formerly from the State of New York. I passed myself while there by my real name, and as a brother of General Ruggles, and represented that I was on my way home to Bolivar County, Mississippi, from Savannah, Georgia, where I had been on business pertaining to the Confederate Government. I gave him such an account of the general state of affairs all over the Confederate States that he did not doubt, in the least, the statements that I made. When I called at his house I had no intentions of remaining there long, but his hospitality was so strongly urged upon me that I accepted it to enable my horse to rest. While staying there I was much amused by reading a story in the Natchez (Miss.) Courier concerning myself. How the paper had made its way there I can not tell. Miss Ella, a daughter of Mr. F.'s, handed me the piece to read, remarking that it was one of the curious incidents of the war. Little did she think that in presenting it to me she was making it doubly so. The story was written by Mr. James Dugan, a friend of mine in the 14th Illinois Infantry. Sergeant Downs, of the 20th Ohio, had related to Mr. Dugan several of the incidents in my experience as scout; and from one of those he wrote a romance, in which I figured as the hero, giving instead of my full name only the initial letter to my surname, together with the name of my company and regiment. It was given to the public as a narrative of facts, and the announcement made that an extended history of my services would be forthcoming from the able pen of Captain Downs. It was first published in 1863, in the paper I have before mentioned. Coming to me as it did, under such peculiar circumstances, it amused me exceedingly. I took good care, however, that my lady friend did not find out that I was the hero of the story. My feelings at the time can be better imagined by perusing it. It ran as follows: "On board the magnificent steamer 'Imperial,' on her passage from St. Louis to New Orleans, in the month of October, A. D. 1860, reclining upon one of those elegantly-furnished sofas in her sumptuous cabin, might have been seen the hero of our story wrapped in a 'brown study.'