"You'll have to ride to Kinston. The railroad won't be through until to-morrow: I'll telegraph there, and to General Easton at Morehead City. He'll have a boat for you. Tell Grant I expect to run up there in a day or two myself, when things are arranged here. You may wait until I come." "Yes, sir." I turned to go, but Clarence Colfax was on my mind "General?" "Eh! what?" "General, could you hold Colonel Colfax until I see you again?" It was a bold thing to say, and I quaked. And he looked at me in his keen way, through and through "You saved his life once before, didn't you?" "You allowed me to have him sent home from Vicksburg, sir." He answered with one of his jokes--apropos of something he said on the Court House steps at Vicksburg. Perhaps I shall tell it to you sometime. "Well, well," he said, "I'll see, I'll see. Thank God this war is pretty near over. I'll let you know, Brice, before I shoot him." I rode the thirty odd miles to Kinston in--little more than three hours. A locomotive was waiting for me, and I jumped into a cab with a friendly engineer. Soon we were roaring seaward through the vast pine forests. It was a lonely journey, and you were much in my mind. My greatest apprehension was that we might be derailed and the despatches captured; for as fast as our army had advanced, the track of it had closed again, like the wake of a ship at sea. Guerillas were roving about, tearing up ties and destroying bridges. There was one five-minute interval of excitement when, far down the tunnel through the forest, we saw a light gleaming. The engineer said there was no house there, that it must be a fire. But we did not slacken our speed, and gradually the leaping flames grew larger and redder until we were upon them. Not one gaunt figure stood between them and us. Not one shot broke the stillness of the night. As dawn broke I beheld the flat, gray waters of the Sound stretching away to the eastward, and there was the boat at the desolate wharf beside the warehouse, her steam rising white in the chill morning air. CHAPTER XIV THE SAME, CONTINUED HEADQUARTERS ARMIES OF THE UNITED STATES, CITY POINT, VIRGINIA, March 28, 1865.