once," said I; "what is your
regiment?"

"The Seventh," he replied.

"And your brigade?"

He looked up wonderingly at this, and I feared that I had made an
unnecessary mistake through over-carefulness in trying to secure another
corroboration of what I already knew well enough. I thought I could
perceive his idea, and I added in an instant: "Don't you know that
troops have come up in the night? What brigade is yours?"

"Branch's," he said.

"Then you will find your camp just in this direction," said I, pointing
to the rear and left. He slunk away, seemingly well pleased to be quit
at so cheap a cost.

Fearing that our voices had been heard by the pickets, I plunged through
the bushes directly toward the east, and ran for a minute without
pausing. Again the cold sweat was dropping from my face; again I had
felt the mysterious mental agony attendant upon a too violent transition
of personality. Perhaps it was this peculiar condition which pressed me
to prolonged and unguarded energy. I went through thicket and brier
patch, over logs and gullies, and when I paused I knew not where I was.

After some reflection I judged that I had pursued an easterly direction
so far that Jones was now not to the northeast, but more to the north; I
changed my course then, bending toward the north, and before sunrise
reached the creek which, on the preceding night, I had crossed after
leaving Jones. I did not know whether he was above me or below, so I
crossed the stream at the place where I struck it, and went straight
away from it through the swamp.

After going a long distance I began to fear that I was missing my
course, and I did not know which way to turn. I whistled; there was
no response.

No opening could be seen in any direction through the swamp. My present
course had led me wrong; it would not do at all to go on; I should get
farther and farther away from Jones. If I should assume any direction as
the right one, I should be likely to have guessed wrong. I spent an hour
working my way laboriously through the swamp, making wide and wider
sweeps to reach some opening or some tree on higher ground. At last I
saw open ground on my left. I went rapidly to it, and found a field,
with a fence separating it from the woods,--the fence running east and
west,--and saw, several hundred yards toward the west, the corner of the
field at which I had stationed Jones.

At once I began to go rapidly down the hill toward the place. As