“It happened one day while we were at dinner,” replied his mother. “The Union soldiers had been at work on the levee for two or three days, and we were expecting the boats through every hour. Godfrey kept his saddle on his horse night and day, and his weapons close at hand, so that he could catch them up at any moment. While we were eating dinner on this particular day, your father, who sat opposite the window, looked up all of a sudden, and before I could ask him the reason for his pale face, he was on his feet and out at the door. I looked through the window, and right here in our lake, and not fifty yards from the door, was the first gunboat I had ever seen. The Federals had got through the levee at last, and one of their boats, being of that sort which don’t make any noise when they run, was right upon us before we knew it. I don’t know her name to this day, but she had the figure 9 painted on her pilot house, and I could see the cannons sticking out of the port-holes. On her upper deck were a lot of cotton bales placed like breastworks, and behind these cotton bales were fifty or sixty men, all with muskets in their hands, and watching and waiting for a chance to shoot at somebody. Well, they found that chance as soon as your father was fairly out at the door. Two jumps brought him to his horse which was hitched in the yard, another put him in the saddle, and in a minute more he was running the gauntlet.” “Wasn’t it strange that he escaped being hit?” “It was providential,” replied Mrs. Evans. “I have heard Godfrey himself say that he could have shot a squirrel’s eye out at the distance he was from the gunboat. They began to shoot at him as soon as he left the house, and I sat there and looked through the window and saw them do it. They fired as fast as they could get a sight at him, and the guns popped so rapidly that they reminded me of a burning cane-brake. When they stopped, I managed to get up and go to the door. There was a big cotton field where this brier patch is now, and it was half a mile wide. On the other side of it was a rail fence that ran between the field and the woods, and there I saw Godfrey’s white horse. I thought at first that Godfrey wasn’t with him, but he was. He was leaning over and throwing the top rails off the fence. When he had done that, he straightened up, and seeing me standing in the door, he waived his hat to let me know that he was safe. Then he jumped his horse over the fence into the woods, and rode away out of sight.