He now could ask, and did ask, to be sent to a hospital, and next day was sent to the Lincoln Hospital, near Georgetown. It changed that on the next couch to his in the hospital lay a Confederate captain, named Lawrence Norton, of Georgia. The two soon became acquainted. The Colonel told the Captain that if by any means the ball and chain could be taken from his leg, he could escape from the hospital. The Captain told his wife this when she visited him next day; the wife became immediately interested, and soon procured and brought to her husband a watch-spring file; the Captain that same night so filed the clasp, which held the ball and chain to the Colonel's ankle, that it could be slipped off at any moment. The Colonel watched the surgeon when he came into the hospital next day, and managed to slip a pass from the surgeon's overcoat pocket while it lay upon a stand near his bed. With this pass and two empty bottles in his hand, he rushed by the sentinel at the door, on the plea that he was in great haste to bring medicines which the doctor had just sent him after. Once outside the building, he sprang over a cemetery fence, and from thenceforth allowed no grass to grow under his feet until he was safe at Ben Beveridge's hotel. Here, of course, there was great rejoicing at the Colonel's wonderful escape; but, fearing pursuit, it was thought best that the Colonel should proceed at once to Baltimore, and from thence to Philadelphia. It was deemed best, too, that he should not start from the Washington depot, lest detectives be on the watch there for him. Accordingly, Ben ordered up his own spanking team of bays, and before daybreak had the Colonel at the Bladensburg station, where he took the first train that came along for Baltimore. Fearing, however, to go into the Baltimore depot, lest detectives might be there on the watch for him, the Colonel got off the train at the Relay House, and gave a man a twenty-dollar gold piece to drive him into Baltimore, a distance of about thirteen miles. He went direct to the Fountain Hotel, in Light Street, where he remained carefully concealed for several days, only seeing Mr. Thomas, Mr. Wilson, and such others as he knew to be firm friends of the Southern cause. Then he went to Philadelphia and remained at Dr. Howell's for about two weeks.