On inquiry after my return to the cook-house, I found four other boys who were also planning an escape, and who were only too glad to get me to join them and take charge of the affair.  Our plans were well laid and well executed, as the sequel will prove, and in this particular my own experience in the endeavor to escape from Andersonville is not entirely dissimilar from yours, though it had different results.  I very much regret that in the attempt I lost my penciled memorandum, in which it was my habit to chronicle what went on around me daily, and where I had the names of my brave comrades who made the effort to escape with me.  Unfortunately, I cannot now recall to memory the name of one of them or remember to what commands they belonged.

I knew that our greatest risk was run in eluding the guards, and that in the morning we should be compelled to cheat the blood-hounds.  The first we managed to do very well, not without many hairbreadth escapes, however; but we did succeed in getting through both lines of guards, and found ourselves in the densest pine forest I ever saw.  We traveled, as nearly as we could judge, due north all night until daylight.  From our fatigue and bruises, and the long hours that had elapsed since 8 o’clock, the time of our starting, we thought we had come not less than twelve or fifteen miles.  Imagine our surprise and mortification, then, when we could plainly hear the reveille, and almost the Sergeant’s voice calling the roll, while the answers of “Here!” were perfectly distinct.  We could not possibly have been more than a mile, or a mile-and-a-half at the farthest, from the Stockade.

Our anxiety and mortification were doubled when at the usual hour—­as we supposed—­we heard the well-known and long-familiar sound of the hunter’s horn, calling his hounds to their accustomed task of making the circuit of the Stockade, for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not any “Yankee” had had the audacity to attempt an escape.  The hounds, anticipating, no doubt, this usual daily work, gave forth glad barks of joy at being thus called forth to duty.  We heard them start, as was usual, from about the railroad depot (as we imagined), but the sounds growing fainter and fainter gave us a little hope that our trail had been missed.  Only a short time, however, were we allowed this pleasant reflection, for ere long—­it could not have been more than an hour—­we could plainly see that they were drawing nearer and nearer.  They finally appeared so close that I advised the boys to climb a tree or sapling in order to keep the dogs from biting them, and to be ready to surrender when the hunters came up, hoping thus to experience as little misery as possible, and not dreaming but that we were caught.  On, on came the hounds, nearer and nearer still, till we imagined that we could see the undergrowth in the forest shaking by coming in contact with their bodies.  Plainer and plainer came the sound of the hunter’s voice urging them