When morning came we were still running in the same direction that we started.  In the confusion of loading us upon the cars the previous evening, I had been allowed to approach too near a Rebel officer’s stock of rations, and the result was his being the loser and myself the gainer of a canteen filled with fairly good molasses.  Andrews and I had some corn bread, and we, breakfasted sumptuously upon it and the molasses, which was certainly none-the-less sweet from having been stolen.

Our meal over, we began reconnoitering, as much for employment as anything else.  We were in the front end of a box car.  With a saw made on the back of a case-knife we cut a hole through the boards big enough to permit us to pass out, and perhaps escape.  We found that we were on the foremost box car of the train—­the next vehicle to us being a passenger coach, in which were the Rebel officers.  On the rear platform of this car was seated one of their servants—­a trusty old slave, well dressed, for a negro, and as respectful as his class usually was.  Said I to him: 

“Well, uncle, where are they taking us?”

He replied: 

“Well, sah, I couldn’t rightly say.”

“But you could guess, if you tried, couldn’t you?”

“Yes sah.”

He gave a quick look around to see if the door behind him was so securely shut that he could not be overheard by the Rebels inside the car, his dull, stolid face lighted up as a negro’s always does in the excitement of doing something cunning, and he said in a loud whisper: 

“Dey’s a-gwine to take you to Wilmington—­ef dey kin get you dar!”

“Can get us there!” said I in astonishment.  “Is there anything to prevent them taking us there?”

The dark face filled with inexpressible meaning.  I asked: 

“It isn’t possible that there are any Yankees down there to interfere, is it?”

The great eyes flamed up with intelligence to tell me that I guessed aright; again he glanced nervously around to assure himself that no one was eavesdropping, and then he said in a whisper, just loud enough to be heard above the noise of the moving train: 

“De Yankees took Wilmington yesterday mawning.”

The news startled me, but it was true, our troops having driven out the Rebel troops, and entered Wilmington, on the preceding day—­the 22d of February, 1865, as I learned afterwards.  How this negro came to know more of what was going on than his masters puzzled me much.  That he did know more was beyond question, since if the Rebels in whose charge we were had known of Wilmington’s fall, they would not have gone to the trouble of loading us upon the cars and hauling us one, hundred miles in the direction of a City which had come into the hands of our men.