After another meal of raw corn and berries he resumed his journey, and that night made still better progress.

He repeated this for several days and nights—­lying in the woods in the day time, traveling by night through woods, fields, and by-paths avoiding all the fords, bridges and main roads, and living on what he could glean from the fields, that he might not take even so much risk as was involved in going to the negro cabins for food.

But there are always flaws in every man’s armor of caution—­even in so perfect a one as Frank’s.  His complete success so far had the natural effect of inducing a growing carelessness, which wrought his ruin.  One evening he started off briskly, after a refreshing rest and sleep.  He knew that he must be very near Sherman’s lines, and hope cheered him up with the belief that his freedom would soon be won.

Descending from the hill, in whose dense brushwood he had made his bed all day, he entered a large field full of standing corn, and made his way between the rows until he reached, on the other side, the fence that separated it from the main road, across which was another corn-field, that Frank intended entering.

But he neglected his usual precautions on approaching a road, and instead of coming up cautiously and carefully reconnoitering in all directions before he left cover, he sprang boldly over the fence and strode out for the other side.  As he reached the middle of the road, his ears were assailed with the sharp click of a musket being cocked, and the harsh command: 

“Halt! halt, dah, I say!”

Turning with a start to his left he saw not ten feet from him, a mounted patrol, the sound of whose approach had been masked by the deep dust of the road, into which his horse’s hoofs sank noiselessly.

Frank, of course, yielded without a word, and when sent to the officer in command he told the old story about his being an employee of the Griswoldville shops, off on a leave of absence to make a visit to sick relatives.  But, unfortunately, his captors belonged to that section themselves, and speedily caught him in a maze of cross-questioning from which he could not extricate himself.  It also became apparent from his language that he was a Yankee, and it was not far from this to the conclusion that he was a spy—­a conclusion to which the proximity of Sherman’s lines, then less than twenty miles distant-greatly assisted.

By the next morning this belief had become so firmly fixed in the minds of the Rebels that Frank saw a halter dangling alarmingly near, and he concluded the wisest plan was to confess who he really was.

It was not the smallest of his griefs to realize by how slight a chance he had failed.  Had he looked down the road before he climbed the fence, or had he been ten minutes earlier or later, the patrol would not have been there, he could have gained the next field unperceived, and two more nights of successful progress would have taken him into Sherman’s lines at Sand Mountain.  The patrol which caught him was on the look-out for deserters and shirking conscripts, who had become unusually numerous since the fall of Atlanta.