Later I came upon fields and farms, and round these I had to make long circuits. One chain of farms, I thought I never should get through. Again and again I was forced to go back and try again. The temptation to break through my resolution, and cross just this one, or that one, was very strong; and I found that making one's escape, like any other success, depends on his resolution and perseverance. Toward noon, as I was approaching a road, I heard children's voices. I looked, and saw, or thought I saw, a man on horseback. He sat still as though on guard, and I supposed he was one of the enemy's picket. The woods were thin, so I lay down and drew the bushes over me. I watched him, but he did not move, and I soon decided I must stay there as long as he did. Notwithstanding my anxiety, I fell into a doze, probably not for a minute, yet when I opened my eyes, the man was gone, and a tree stood in his place. It was an optical illusion. My eyes had been over-worked for three nights, and for the last twenty hours, constantly strained in examining objects far and near. The moment's rest had dispelled the apparition. I remembered that as the sun was rising that morning, I had long doubted whether a clump of bushes was not a group of my own men--that trees and stumps had several times been changed to sentinels and guards; and I remembered, also, the tents in the morning, and the camp-fires during the night. I now began to suffer from thirst, for I could only drink by dipping up water with one hand. The sun, too, beat down through the half-leaved trees, and became painful. I twisted some leaves into a sort of cap, but it was often brushed off, and at best made but a poor shelter. I had been disappointed also in not meeting a contraband. Some I had seen in fields, but always with white men, and them I must shun; and as I did so, I asked myself whether this was the United States, and these Americans, that I should be time skulking like a hunted criminal. Feeling now and then a little faint, I decided on going to a house for something to eat, and again plunging into the woods. Yet here great caution was necessary. I wanted a small house, because it would probably contain but one man, and I must have it out of sight of neighbors and near woods. I passed several, but none of them complied with my conditions--one was too large, another too far back in an open field, and a third was overlooked by a fourth.