“The way I happened to see the Yanks was like this.  I went to carry some clothes to my young master.  He was a doctor, and was out where they were drilling the men.  I laid down on the carpet in his tent and I heard music playing ’In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand and live and die in Dixie.’  I got up and come out and looked up ever which way but I couldn’t see nothing.  I went back again and laid down again in the tent, and I heard it again.  I run out and looked all up and around again, and I still couldn’t see nothin’.  That time I looked and saw my young master talking to another officer—­I can’t remember his name.  My young master said, ‘What you looking for?’

“I said, ’I’m looking for them angels I hear playing.  Don’t you hear em playing Dixie?’ The other officer said, ’Celas, you ought to whip that nigger.’  I went back into the tent.  My young master said, ’Whip him for what?’ And he said, ‘For telling that lie.’  My young master said to him like this, ‘He don’t tell lies.  He heard something somewhere.’

“Then they got through talking and he come on in and I seed him and beckoned to him.  He came to me and I said, ‘Lie down there.’  He laid down and I laid down with him, and he heard it.  Then he said, ’Look out there and tell him to come in.’

“I called the other officer and he come in.  The doctor (that was my young master) said, ‘Lie down there.’  When he laid down by my young master, he heard it too.  Then the doctor said to him, ’You said William was telling a damn lie.’  He said, ‘I beg your pardon, doctor.’

“My young master got up and said, ’Where is my spy glasses?  Le’me have a look.’  He went out and there was a mountain called the Blue Ridge Mountain.  He looked but he didn’t see nothin’.  I went out and looked too.  I said, ‘Look down the line beside those two big trees,’ and I handed the glasses back to him.  He looked and then he hollered, ’My God, look yonder’ and handed the spy glasses to the other officer.  He looked too.  Then the doctor said, ‘What are we going to do?’ He said, ’I am goin’ to put pickets way out.’  He told me to get to my mule.  I got.  He put one of his spurs on my foot and told me to go home and tell ‘ma’ the Yanks were coming.  You know what ‘ma’ he was talking about?  That was his wife’s mother.  We all called her ‘mother.’

“I carried the note.  When I got to Mrs. Dobbins’ house, I yelled, ’The Yanks are coming—­Yankees, Yankees, Yankees!’ She had two boys.  They runned out and said, ‘What did you say?’

“I said, ‘Yankees, Yankees!’

“They said, ‘Hell, what could he see?’

“I come on then and got against Miss Yancy’s.  She had a son, a man named Henry Yancy.  He had a sore leg.  He asked me what I said.  I told him that the Yanks were coming.  He called for Henry, a boy that stayed with him, and had him saddle his horse.  Then he got on it and rode up town.  When he got up there, he was questioned bout how did he know it.  Did he see them.  He said he didn’t see them, that Celas Neal saw them and the doctor’s mother’s boy brought the message.  Then he taken off.