escape, until at last the attempt was made and he stood one dark, rainy night, out on the highway a free man, breathing the pure breath of heaven, and ready to sell his life at any cost rather than go back again to the prison he had left. He had put his trust in God, and God had raised him up a friend at once, who had seen him leave the prison, and greatly aided him in his escape, just as he had aided others, knowing the while that by so doing he was putting his own life in jeopardy. But a staunch Unionist at heart, he was willing to brave everything for the cause, and it was through his instrumentality and minute directions that Will Mather had finally reached the shelter of the mountains which separate North Carolina from Tennessee. He had found friends all along the route, true, loyal men, who had periled their lives for him; brave tender women, whose hands had ministered so kindly to his wants, and who had so cheerfully divided with him their scanty meals, even though hunger was written upon their thin, haggard faces, and stared in their sunken eyes. And Will had taken down each name, and registered a vow that if ever he reached the North, these noble self-denying people should be rewarded, and if possible removed from a neighborhood where they suffered so much from privation and from the hands of their former friends, who, suspecting their sentiments, heaped upon them every possible abuse. Ragged, bareheaded, footsore and worn, he came at last, at the close of a June day, to the entrance of a cave in the hills to which he had been directed, and where, on the damp earth, he slept so soundly from fatigue and exhaustion that the morning sun was shining through the entrance to the cave, and a robin, on a shrub growing near, was trilling its morning song ere he awoke. The air, though damp from the water which trickled through the rocks, was close and stifling, and Will crept cautiously out from his hiding-place, and sitting down upon the ground drank in the beauty and stillness of the summer morning. Exactly where he was he did not know, but he felt certain that his face was toward the land where the Stars and Stripes were waving, and a thrill of joy ran through his veins as he thought of home and Rose, whose eyes by this time had grown so dim with looking for him. “God take me safely to her,” he whispered, when up the mountain side came the sound of voices and the tramp of feet. Creeping to the farthest side of the cave, and crawling down beneath the shelving rock where the cool waters were dripping, he hoped to avoid being seen. Up to this moment Will’s courage had never flagged, but now, when the Federal lines were not many miles away, and Rose and home seemed certain, he felt a great pang of fear, and his white lips whispered, “God pity me! God help me, God save me, for his own glory, if not for Rose’s sake,” then, knee-deep in the pool of water, he stood with his body nearly double, while the