“Well,” he said, at last, “I am going back to camp now, and I start out before daylight. If you can induce the General to let you accompany us before that time I’ll make no objection.”

George gave a little exclamation of delight. “Come,” he said, snapping his fingers at Waggie, “let us see what we can do to talk the old General into it.”

The rain was now coming down in torrents, while the sharp, almost deafening cracks of thunder sounded as if the whole artillery of the Union army were engaged in practice. Soon all the conspirators were hurrying back to camp. Andrews was the very last to leave the woods where he had divulged his plans.

“Heaven forgive me,” he mused, half sadly, “if I am leading these boys into a death trap.” But as a sudden flash of lightning illuminated the wet landscape, as with the brightness of day, there came into the leader’s strong face a look of calm resolution. “It’s worth all the danger,” he added.

An hour later George Knight came running into the tent which Andrews occupied in the camp on Duck River. The leader was enveloped in a woolen overcoat, and on his well-shaped head was a slouch hat of the kind generally worn by Southerners. By the dim, sickly light of the candle which sputtered on a camp stool it could be seen that he had been writing, for pen, ink and a sealed letter were spread out upon the top of a leathern army trunk.

“Well,” cried Andrews, picking up the candle from its tin socket and flashing it in the radiant face of the boy. “Ah! No need to ask you! I see by your dancing eyes that you have wheedled old Mitchell into allowing you to do a foolish thing.”

The smile on the lad’s face vanished. “Don’t you want me to go along with you?” he asked, in an injured tone.

The leader replaced the candle in the socket and then took one of George’s hands between his own strong palms. “George,” he said cordially, “you’re a boy after my own heart, and I’d like nothing better than to have you for a companion; but it’s because I do like you that I’m sorry you are about to run such a risk—and that’s the truth. How did you contrive to persuade the General?”

George seated himself on Andrews’ bed, and laughed. “It was hard work at first,” he explained, “but after he had refused me twice I said to him: ‘General, if you were a boy in my place, and had heard of this expedition, what would you do?’ ‘By all the stars,’ he said, ‘I would run away to it rather than miss it—and get shot afterwards as a deserter, I suppose.’ ‘Then don’t put me under the temptation of running away,’ said I. At this the General laughed. Then he said: ‘Well, tell Andrews you can go—and that I’ll never forgive him if he lets anything happen to you. After all, the Confederates would never hang a child like you.’”

“So he too calls you a child!” laughed Andrews.

“Of course I’m not a child,” cried George proudly, as he jumped from the bed and stood up very straight, to make himself look as tall as possible; “but the General may call me a six-weeks’ old baby if he only lets me go along with you.”

“There is no time to waste,” announced Andrews. “In the third tent from mine, to the right, you will find Privates Macgreggor and Watson, of the Second Ohio Volunteers. They have just offered to go with us, and I have accepted them in addition to the rest. Go to them, ask them to get you a suit of plain clothes, put it on instead of your uniform, and stick to them closely from the moment you leave camp until you meet me, as I hope you will, at Marietta. And be particularly careful to have nothing about you which could in any way lead to your identification as a Union soldier in case you should be arrested and searched.”

“Hurrah!” said George, half under his breath.

“May we all be hurrahing this time next week,” returned Andrews. “Here, George, as you go out give this letter to the sentry outside, to be sent off to-morrow in the camp mail.” As he spoke he took the sealed note from the army trunk, and handed it to the boy. “It is written to the young woman I am engaged to marry,” he explained, “and if we all get out of this bridge-burning business with our heads on our shoulders you can come dance at my wedding, and be my best man.”

“I’d dance at twenty weddings for you,” enthusiastically cried George, who was beginning to have a great admiration for his new friend.

“You don’t want me to be married twenty times, do you, my boy?” protested Andrews, smiling.

“I would do a great deal to oblige you,” retorted George. Then, after warmly grasping his leader by the hand, he bounded out of the tent. The night was black, and the rain was still descending in a veritable torrent, but to the lad everything seemed clear and rosy. He only saw before him a mighty adventure—and that, to his ardent, youthful spirit, made the whole world appear charming.

It was the Thursday afternoon succeeding the Monday night described in the former chapter. On the north bank of the Tennessee River, not far from the town of Jasper, three drenched figures might be discerned. They were looking somewhat longingly in the direction of a white frame house not fifty yards away from the stream, which, swollen by the recent storms, was in a particularly turbulent mood. There was nothing very attractive about the building save that it suggested shelter from the rain without, and that the smoke curling up from its large chimney held forth vague hopes of a palatable supper. Certainly there was little in the landscape itself to tempt any one to remain outdoors. The three wanderers seemed to be of this opinion, for they suddenly made a move towards the house. They were roughly dressed, their clothes were soaking, and their high boots bore the evidence of a long, muddy tramp across country.

“Well,” grumbled one of them, a thick-set, middle-aged man, with a good-humored expression and a four-days’ growth of iron-gray beard on his face; “why did I leave home and home cooking to enlist in the army and then wander over the earth like this?”

“Mr. Watson!” exclaimed the person next to him, in a tone of boyish surprise; “how can you talk like that? Why, I am having the time of my life.”

The speaker was George Knight. There was mud on his face, and the natty drummer boy in blue uniform had given place to a young fellow who outwardly resembled an ordinary farm hand. But there could be no doubt, from the light which shone in his bright eyes, that he was enjoying himself to the full.

“Humph!” returned Watson. “When you get as old as I am, my boy, you won’t take such keen delight in walking through mire.”

The boy laughed, and turned to the third member of the party. “Are you tired, too, Macgreggor?” he asked.

Macgreggor, a compactly built, athletic young man of twenty-seven or thereabouts, with a light-brown beard and mustache which made him look older than he really was, shook the rain from his hat and said cheerily, “I’ve done a good deal of mountain climbing since Tuesday morning, but I’m not too tired to eat a good supper, if we are lucky enough to find one in this place.”

It need hardly be repeated that Watson and Macgreggor were the two men in whose care Andrews had placed George Knight. They were both brave, resourceful men. During their long trudge across the