One morning in February we bade farewell to the scenes that had become so dear to us, and turned our faces homeward. On the train with us was a wounded officer. His hurt was in the leg, and he was on a cot in one corner of the car. His wound was very painful, and as the train jolted he seemed to suffer much and was very cross and irritable. His wife was with him. When we reached the bridge which had been burned a few weeks before, we had to stop and transfer mail and passengers. We crossed the Obion on the ties of the new and unfinished bridge. A soldier carried me, another carried “Little Rosebud,” while still another led my mother. The bridge was very high, and they told us the water was many feet deep at this point. A few days previous the man who led my mother had told a lady while crossing, just how deep it was (eighty feet) and she became so faint and frightened at the knowledge, that he found it almost impossible to convey her safely over. While crossing I asked the man who carried me, in a whisper, how much he thought I weighed. “Oh, about a ton,” was his laughing reply, and the next time I spoke after clearing the bridge, my voice had returned and I spoke aloud for the first time since my recovery from the measles. When we arrived at Columbus we found there would be no boat until the next day. We remained all night at the hotel, trying in vain to sleep on a hard, relentless bed. The boat came in next day, but the wind was blowing a gale, and the Captain refused to go further. The boat was a small, box-like affair, called the Rob Roy, top-heavy and in danger of capsizing in a high wind. All day we remained at the hotel, and all day the boat remained tied up at the landing. I read Ruth Hall within while the wind raged without, and the huge waves washed the shore. At nightfall the captain sent word to the hotel for the passengers to come on board, and should the wind lull through the night, he would start. But the wind didn’t lull, and we remained tied up all night. I lay on a narrow wooden bench with our carpet bag for a pillow, while my poor, tired mother passed another sleepless night sitting on a hard, uncomfortable chair, with the baby in her arms. All the large boats had gone north, and the Rob Roy was the only one plying between Columbus and Cairo. It had no conveniences whatever, neither ladies’ cabin nor staterooms, and no facilities for cooking and eating. How well I remember that comfortless night, how one of the boat’s crew dropped a heavy wooden bucket of water on the bare floor, making a terrific crash. I thought the boiler had burst, and we were on our way to the bottom. Then anon, the blaze of the lamp, hung high on the side of the little square cabin, shot out at the top of the dingy chimney, and I sat up on my bench bed and screamed out, “Take it down, take it down.”