Of what he suffered in the Southern prisons he did not speak, either then or ever after, but began with the day when, with a courage born of desperation, he jumped from the moving train, and was shot down by the guard.  Partially stunned, he still, retained sense enough to know when a tall form bent over him, and to hear the rough but kindly voice which said: 

“Play ’possum, Yank.  Make b’lieve you’re dead, and throw them hellhounds off the scent.”

This was the last he knew for many weeks, and when again he awoke to consciousness he found himself on the upper floor of a dilapidated hut, which stood in the center of a little wood, his bed a pile of straw, over which was spread a clean patchwork quilt, while seated at his side, and watching him intently, was the same man who had bent over him in the field, and shouted to the rebels that he was dead.

“I shall never forget my sensations then,” Mark said, “for, with the exception of this present hour, when I hold you, my darling, in my arms, and know the danger is over, I never experienced a moment of greater happiness and rest than when, up in that squalid garret, where the rafters, festooned with cobwebs and dust, could be touched by stretching out my hand, and where the sunlight only found an entrance through an aperture in the roof, which admitted the rain as well, I came back to life again, the pain in my head all gone, and nothing left save a delicious feeling of languor, which prompted me to lie quietly for several minutes, examining my surroundings, and speculating upon the chance which brought me there.  That I was a prisoner I did not doubt, until the man at my side said to me, cheerily:  ’Well, old chap, you’ve come through it like a major, though I was mighty dubious a spell about that pesky ball.  But old Aunt Bab and me fished it out, and since then you’ve begun to mend.’

“‘Where am I?  Who are you?’ I asked, and he replied:  ’Who be I?  Why, I’m Jack Jennin’s, the rarinest, red-hottest secesh thar is in these yere parts, so the rebs thinks; but ’twixt you and me, boy, I’m the tallest kind of a Union—­got a piece of the old flag sewed inside of my boots, and every night before sleepin’ I prays Lord gin Abe the victory,’ and raise Cain generally in t’other camp, and forgive Jack Jennin’s for tellin’ so many lies, and makin’ b’leeve he’s one thing, when you know and he knows he’s t’other.  If I’ve spared one Union chap, I’ll bet I have a hundred, me and old Bab, a black woman who lives here and tends to the cases I fotch her, till we contrive to git ’em inter Tennessee, whar they hev to shift for themselves.’