No doubt I should here have all the graces of a ready pen at my beck, honey-dipped, or Vulcan-forged, in accordance with my humor, whether sad or harsh, in making up the climax of my account; for at this spot the good writer would be most impressive in his language, and set the reader in a tremble. We waited for seventy minutes in this road-side field, the prisoners resignedly huddling together, with the callous guards making a circle about them. Let me enlarge upon our circumstances. The time, about eight o'clock; the atmosphere thick and murky; the sky overcast, promising a warm September night. I asked the Sergeant if it would rain, and said carelessly some other trifles. I feigned an excess of sleepiness. Our detachment lay some thirty yards from the highway, spread into a thin line of no evenness, running parallel with the road, which, in the gloom, our eyes could scarcely find. The exigencies of the service had proved the ruin of the fences; and only here and there in the vague darkness could one make out the black bunch of a shadowy tree. Just beyond us--for my Sergeant and myself stood at the rear extremity, the land's--end of this shoal of prisoners, outside of the ring of guards sparely posted, on the very top of the ridge which we had ascended--was a low clump of bushes, (perhaps neck-high,) squat and opaque, with much the appearance of a ball of garden boxwood. The hill, I thought, rolled away on either side,--taking some comfort to myself in the conjecture; and the inky leaf-globe, only a little more sombre than its background, could not be seen in a hasty glance. This clump, in its innocent blackness, would cover my purposed guilt; and I resolved to confide to it alone the secret crime of my attempted escape.