The suspense became fearful.

But I received much encouragement from the singular conduct of our guards.  First I noticed a Captain, who had been especially mean to us while at Florence.

He was walking on the ground by the train.  His face was pale, his teeth set, and his eyes shone with excitement.  He called out in a strange, forced voice to his men and boys on the roof of the cars: 

“Here, you fellers git down off’en thar and form a line.”

The fellows did so, in a slow, constrained, frightened ways and huddled together, in the most unsoldierly manner.

The whole thing reminded me of a scene I once saw in our line, where a weak-kneed Captain was ordered to take a party of rather chicken-hearted recruits out on the skirmish-line.

We immediately divined what was the matter.  The lines in front of us were really those of our people, and the idiots of guards, not knowing of their entire safety when protected by a flag of truce, were scared half out of their small wits at approaching so near to armed Yankees.

We showered taunts and jeers upon them.  An Irishman in my car yelled out: 

“Och, ye dirty spalpeens; it’s not shootin’ prisoners ye are now; it’s cumin’ where the Yankee b’ys hev the gun; and the minnit ye say thim yer white livers show themselves in yer pale faces.  Bad luck to the blatherin’ bastards that yez are, and to the mothers that bore ye.”

At length our train moved up so near to the line that I could see it was the grand, old loyal blue that clothed the forms of the men who were pacing up and down.

And certainly the world does not hold as superb looking men as these appeared to me.  Finely formed, stalwart, full-fed and well clothed, they formed the most delightful contrast with the scrawny, shambling, villain-visaged little clay-eaters and white trash who had looked down upon us from the sentry boxes for many long months.

I sprang out of the cars and began washing my face and hands in the ditch at the side of the road.  The Rebel Captain, noticing me, said, in the old, hateful, brutal, imperious tone: 

“Git back in dat cah, dah.”

An hour before I would have scrambled back as quickly as possible, knowing that an instant’s hesitation would be followed by a bullet.  Now, I looked him in the face, and said as irritatingly as possible: 

“O, you go to ——­, you Rebel.  I’m going into Uncle Sam’s lines with as little Rebel filth on me as possible.”

He passed me without replying.

His day of shooting was past.

Descending from the cars, we passed through the guards into our lines, a Rebel and a Union clerk checking us off as we passed.  By the time it was dark we were all under our flag again.

The place where we came through was several miles west of Wilmington, where the railroad crossed a branch of the Cape Fear River.  The point was held by a brigade of Schofield’s army—­the Twenty-Third Army Corps.