"Take--my--compass--quick!" I returned, and pressed it into his hand. He was not as good an astronomer as I. He looked a hurried remonstrance at me; but was obliged to hide it at once, and could not, I knew, waste any eloquence now. Although, moreover, he was a lover, Nature had never endowed him with the art of speaking through the eye. There were stronger reasons in favor of his escape than of mine,--worldly, if not spiritual,--and he suffered from a dangerous nervousness, in dwelling upon the magnitude of the issue before him, which was not in my way. "It is now five," I said; "at seven, if in such woods as this, you must watch your chance and double." "Which way?" he asked. "Travel north-northeast, seven miles," I whispered. Then, as if anxious to burst into a flood of eager words, he began,-- "But you"---- I looked at him fixedly, and moved off towards my Sergeant. That cursed tape before me now again made a twist in my brain. I was astonished at my Sergeant's opening a conversation. We were travelling (wearily enough) through a piece of woods, overarching and autumn-tinted, the road being cut down, and, consequently, either side of it walled in by upheaving embankments, green-covered and yellow-fringed, over which the declining sun could not dart its rays upon us. The heavy trains of the entire army were making the march along with us, disturbing the modest influences of the spot,--some trundling forward in the van, others toiling after in our rear, the tending angels of all being drowsy, in the shape of the lazy teamsters astride their beasts. Only that peculiar music, made up of the ponderous _thud_ (the birds had all grown still) or tramp of the men for a bass,--of the clink and clatter of the canteens for a treble,--and of a little broken conversation, in the whining, drawling tones of the guard, on their own side of the lines, and so with no quieting weight upon their tongues, for a _viva-voce_ accompaniment,--broke the sweet summer stillness. The shafts of sunlight bridging the road above our heads, making a golden ether-plank for the air-insects to cross upon, and lighting up the veins in the trembling leaves as the breeze put them to confusion, set me to thinking of the eyebrows that the Adjutant was engaged to, and, no doubt, of eyebrows in general. A cool air, smelling of mould and fallen leaves, perhaps a little damp, fell upon us here. The charms of Nature may have loosened the Sergeant's tongue. "I was captured in Mar'land," he began, looking straight before him, but of course honoring me with his address. I was grateful to him, a little for companionship's sake, but chiefly for here giving me a chance that I had hoped for, as I deemed it of considerable value,--I mean, a chance to dig down to the mine of good feeling, to the heart of this gray-covered, slumbering crater, that, an hour since, had thrust out that "do"; and also, I was beholden to him for taking my thoughts from the tape.