that he was never betrayed by or disappointed in a field-negro, but could always approach any one of them with perfect confidence in his extending all the aid in his power, whether as a guide to escape, as sentinel to signal danger, or a purveyor of food.  These services were frequently attended with the greatest personal risk, but they were none the less readily undertaken.  This applies only to the field-hands; the house servants were treacherous and wholly unreliable.  Very many of our men who managed to get away from the prisons were recaptured through their betrayal by house servants, but none were retaken where a field hand could prevent it.

We were much interested in watching the negro work.  They wove in a great deal of their peculiar, wild, mournful music, whenever the character of the labor permitted.  They seemed to sing the music for the music’s sake alone, and were as heedless of the fitness of the accompanying words, as the composer of a modern opera is of his libretto.  One middle aged man, with a powerful, mellow baritone, like the round, full notes of a French horn, played by a virtuoso, was the musical leader of the party.  He never seemed to bother himself about air, notes or words, but improvised all as he went along, and he sang as the spirit moved him.  He would suddenly break out with—­

     “Oh, he’s gone up dah, nevah to come back agin,”

At this every darkey within hearing would roll out, in admirable consonance with the pitch, air and time started by the leader—­

     “O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

Then would ring out from the leader as from the throbbing lips of a silver trumpet

     “Lord bress him soul; I done hope he is happy now!”

And the antiphonal two hundred would chant back

     “O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

And so on for hours.  They never seemed to weary of singing, and we certainly did not of listening to them.  The absolute independence of the conventionalities of tune and sentiment, gave them freedom to wander through a kaleideoscopic variety of harmonic effects, as spontaneous and changeful as the song of a bird.

I sat one evening, long after the shadows of night had fallen upon the hillside, with one of my chums—­a Frank Berkstresser, of the Ninth Maryland Infantry, who before enlisting was a mathematical tutor in college at Hancock, Maryland.  As we listened to the unwearying flow of melody from the camp of the laborers, I thought of and repeated to him Longfellow’s fine lines: 

The slave singing at midnight.

And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strong emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.

          Paul and Silas, in their prison,
          Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen,
          And an earthquake’s arm of might
          Broke their dungeon gates at night.