Now, kind reader, comes one more sad incident of my experience in life. I had finally started for the cupboard, when the old lady told me that she would give me some hoecake, and that I must not try to go until “Pa” came home, and if I did she would have to stop me. I sat and ate the corn cake, which was done very soon, and then I started for the door. It seemed so strange that every time the old lady would say anything the poor crippled young man would repeat most everything his poor old mother would say. When I started to go to the door the old lady stepped between me and the door and I told her if she did not step aside that I would have to use force enough to put her aside, for go I must. She had in her hand a fire poker and I felt afraid that I would have to war with a poor old woman. I told her that go I must, and she stepped aside, sending curses after me. I must say right here that I had at last reached the Blue Ridge mountains, or at least this old man’s place was less than half a mile from the foot of the mountains. Just before I could reach the foot of these mountains I had to cross a large, deep stream. I found that I could not get anything to cross on, though I looked diligently for a boat, and to cross a stream some one hundred rods or so across at such a time of year as it was then meant something. Believing it meant death or capture by the rebels, who would soon be on my trail, I nerved myself for this perilous undertaking. This was surely one of the coldest baths that I had ever before experienced. Now before me was one of the worst things that I had ever encountered in all my life, for if any of the readers of this story ever have been near the Blue Ridge mountains they know that unless a person finds a trail to cross the mountains with it is almost an impossibility to get over them. I knew nothing of any trail and knew from all appearances, and from what I could hear, that bloodhounds would soon be in pursuit of me, so I commenced to climb the side of the steep, rugged mountains, several hundred feet in height, which seemed to be almost perpendicular. After I had climbed for a long way up I could hear the hounds in pursuit of me way below, but I was sure that I had climbed where no human foot had ever been before. Well, I did not dare to look back. This reminds me of the time when two certain people were commanded to flee and not to look back. My position reminded me of those two. You cannot imagine my feelings when I would get hold of some large bush that grew in the crevices of the rocks to have them give way and seem as though they would tear loose and let me fall some three or four hundred feet below. Now, to tell the whole truth, dear reader, it was over half a mile or more, and nearly perpendicular. The hounds could not climb after me, and once more I was satisfied that I had escaped another Southern hell, or I might say, death.