As soon as opportunity afforded we pressed our way to the spot, and there, just below the north gate, in the center of the space between the stockade and the dead-line, at the point where the earth had been most deeply excavated, the sloping surfaces had gathered the waters of the flood. The bottom of the trench was torn up some twenty inches, uncovering the vent of a spring of purest crystal water, which shot up into the air in a column and, falling in a fanlike spray, went babbling down the grade into the noxious brook. Looking across the dead-line, we beheld with wondering eyes and grateful hearts the fountain spring. But our relief was not yet realized; the question which now concerned us was how to bring its cooling waters within reach of our lips. In the afternoon and evening of that eventful Friday we prayed that God would so turn the heart of Capt. Wirtz that he would allow the precious water to be conveyed within our lines. We waited in suspense for the answer, and on Saturday morning, to our delight, we saw the quartermaster again enter the gate with a gang of slaves, bringing fence boards, hammers, nails, axes and stakes. A double row of the latter was driven, so that the direction crossed the dead-line at a slight angle down the hill. A strip was nailed across each pair of stakes, and in the aperture rested a trough made of two fence boards nailed together. At the lower end of this chute in an excavation was set a sugar hogshead, around which clay was tamped so as to aid in making it watertight. When all was ready the upper end of the chute was thrust under the falling column of water, which swiftly ran down and filled to overflowing the large barrel. From this the men by crowds dipped freely of the refreshing, life-giving water. Laughter, songs and thanksgiving abounded. Thus was wrought before our eyes a gracious work of Providence which to many of us was quite as wonderful and quite as manifestly the work of the All-Father as was the smitten rock in the Palestine desert from which the thirst of the fainting hosts of Israel was slacked in their desert wanderings. [Illustration: Stockade bursted by a flood which opened the wonderful "Providence Spring"] CHAPTER VII. WAS IT A MIRACLE? A profound conviction has been cherished by many that the unsealing of Providence Spring was as marked an interposition of the hand of the Almighty as that recorded in the Book of Numbers where it is said, "And Moses lifted up his hand, and smote the rock with his rod twice; and water came forth abundantly and the congregation drank." Num. 20:11. Are they wrong in this conviction? The unwontedness of the incident admits of no dispute. In such a sober work as Rhodes History of the United States, we have the statement, "After a severe storm a spring broke out within the enclosure (Andersonville stockade) and this became one of the main reliances for drinking water." Vol. V., p. 492.