expenses. If we should fail, but return
safely, we might still serve the country by making public the cause of
our failure. If we should fail, and _not_ return safely, but be shot or
hanged as spies,--as we might be, for we could have no protection from
our Government, and no safe-conduct from the Rebels,--two lives would be
added to the thousands already sacrificed to this Rebellion, but they
would as effectually serve the country as if lost on the battle-field.

These are the reasons, and the only reasons, why we went to Richmond.

HOW WE WENT THERE.

We went there in an ambulance, and we went together,--the Colonel and I;
and though two men were never more unlike, we worked together like two
brothers, or like two halves of a pair of shears. That we got _in_ was
owing, perhaps, to me; that we got _out_ was due altogether to him; and
a man more cool, more brave, more self-reliant, and more self-devoted
than that quiet "Western parson" it never was my fortune to encounter.

When the far-away Boston bells were sounding nine, on the morning of
Saturday, the sixteenth of July, we took our glorious Massachusetts
General by the hand, and said to him,--

"Good bye. If you do not see us within ten days, you will know we have
'gone up.'"

"If I do not see you within that time," he replied, "I'll demand you;
and if they don't produce you, body and soul, I'll take two for
one,--better men than you are,--and hang them higher than Haman. My hand
on that. Good bye."

At three o'clock on the afternoon of the same day, mounted on two
raw-boned relics of Sheridan's great raid, and armed with a letter to
Jeff. Davis, a white cambric handkerchief tied to a short stick, and an
honest face,--this last was the Colonel's,--we rode up to the Rebel
lines. A ragged, yellow-faced boy, with a carbine in one hand, and
another white handkerchief tied to another short stick in the other,
came out to meet us.

"Can you tell us, my man, where to find Judge Ould, the Exchange
Commissioner?"

"Yas. Him and t'other 'Change officers is over ter the plantation beyont
Miss Grover's. Ye'll know it by its hevin' nary door nur winder [the
mansion, he meant]. They's all busted in. Foller the bridle-path through
the timber, and keep your rag a-flyin', fur our boys is thicker 'n
huckelberries in them woods, and they mought pop ye, ef they didn't seed
it."

Thanking him, we turned our horses into the "timber," and, galloping
rapidly on, soon came i