“I thought it was all up with me hopes, as Glory McNab said when her sweetheart ran away with the cobbler’s daughter.”  Barney whispered, hugging Jack rapturously.

“Sh—!  Down on your stomachs.  Move that way until you see me rise.  Come.”  And Jack squirmed ahead as if he had been accustomed to the locomotion of snakes all his life.  In ten minutes they were in the improvised stables.  Dick had taken the precaution to place the horses where they could feed on a heap of fodder stacked in the yard, and when they mounted the beasts appeared refreshed as well as rested.  Dick loosing Warick’s horse so that he might make his way back to his master, the fugitives rode cautiously out of the lane, into the open fields, and, though it was not their shortest way, pushed along the river road to mislead pursuit.  Jack’s stratagem had resulted in better luck even than the possession of the horses.  It not only secured a mount for the four, but, what was equally and perhaps, in view of unforeseen contingencies, more important disguises for the two prisoners.

They found an extra coat strapped to each saddle, and with these Barney and Jones were easily transformed into something like Confederate soldiers.  Both Jack and Jones knew every inch of the suburbs, having made the topography a study.  They struck for the less traveled thoroughfares until they reached the northeastern limits, then following the old Cold Harbor road they pushed decisively toward the Williamsburg pike.  But, instead of following it, they traversed on by lanes and bridle-paths during the day.  This was to divide pursuit, as the larger party had taken the river route where Butler’s troops were waiting in boats for them.  The saddle-bags proved a windfall, for in them were orders to proceed to Yorktown and report to General Magruder.  With these Jack felt no difficulty in passing several awkward points, where there was no escaping the cavalry patrols, owing to miles of swamp and impenetrable forest.

They kept clear, however, of such places as the telegraph reached, though at one point they found a post in a great state of excitement over news brought from a neighboring wire, announcing the escape of two prisoners who had been traced to the York road.  But with such papers as Jack presented and the number of the party double that described in the dispatch, the adventurers easily evaded suspicion.  The great danger, however, was in quitting the Confederate lines to pass into Butler’s.  They chose the night for this, as the camp-fires would warn them of the vicinity of outposts, Union or rebel.  They had purposely avoided highways and habitations, and, as a result, were limited in food to such corn-cribs as they found far from human abodes, or the autumn aftermath of vegetables sometimes found in the shadow of the woods.  All were good shots, however, and a fat rabbit and partridge were cooked by Dick with such address, that the party were eager to take more time in halting since they need not starve, no matter how long the journey lasted.