n a satisfactory manner the one question that I had
kept for some time uppermost in my brain to propound to him, he must
pocket my North Star.

"Have you a compass?" I muttered, as he edged by me.

"No," he replied.

My second resolution, then, was, that he should carry my compass.

"I've been robbed of everything," he said.

"Take--my--compass--quick!" I returned, and pressed it into his hand.

He was not as good an astronomer as I. He looked a hurried remonstrance
at me; but was obliged to hide it at once, and could not, I knew, waste
any eloquence now. Although, moreover, he was a lover, Nature had never
endowed him with the art of speaking through the eye. There were
stronger reasons in favor of his escape than of mine,--worldly, if not
spiritual,--and he suffered from a dangerous nervousness, in dwelling
upon the magnitude of the issue before him, which was not in my way.

"It is now five," I said; "at seven, if in such woods as this, you must
watch your chance and double."

"Which way?" he asked.

"Travel north-northeast, seven miles," I whispered.

Then, as if anxious to burst into a flood of eager words, he began,--

"But you"----

I looked at him fixedly, and moved off towards my Sergeant. That cursed
tape before me now again made a twist in my brain.

I was astonished at my Sergeant's opening a conversation.

We were travelling (wearily enough) through a piece of woods,
overarching and autumn-tinted, the road being cut down, and,
consequently, either side of it walled in by upheaving embankments,
green-covered and yellow-fringed, over which the declining sun could not
dart its rays upon us. The heavy trains of the entire army were making
the march along with us, disturbing the modest influences of the
spot,--some trundling forward in the van, others toiling after in our
rear, the tending angels of all being drowsy, in the shape of the lazy
teamsters astride their beasts. Only that peculiar music, made up of the
ponderous _thud_ (the birds had all grown still) or tramp of the men for
a bass,--of the clink and clatter of the canteens for a treble,--and of
a little broken conversation, in the whining, drawling tones of the
guard, on their own side of the lines, and so with no quieting weight
upon their tongues, for a _viva-voce_ accompaniment,--broke the sweet
summer stillness. The shafts of sunlight bridging the road above our
heads, making a golden ether-plank for the air-insects to cross upon,