TWO:

TWO:

TWO:Presently we were in a very dark road, and at a point where it dropped suddenly between steep sides we halted in black shadow. A gleam of pale sand, a whisper of deep flowing waters, and a farther glimmer of more sands beyond them challenged our advance. We had come to a "grapevine ferry." The scow was on the other side, the water too shoal for the horses to swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering, long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at our side, we heard the scow slide from the sands, and in a few moments, moved by two videttes, it touched our shore. Soon we were across, the two videttes riding with us, and beyond a sharp rise, in an old opening made by the swoop of a hurricane, we entered the silent unlighted bivouac of Ferry's scouts. Ferry got down and sat on the earth talking with Quinn, while the sergeants quietly roused the sleepers to horse.When the dogs came at the Squire's call I breathed relief. Ferry appeared behind me and beckoned me deeper into the grove. He sank upon a stump, whispering "That was worse than ten fights."

TWO:"Precisely. And because you have seen[Pg 179] more than I have you are less able to understand the matter than I am. You cannot see the wood for the trees. Again, you were frightened out of your life. Your scientific instincts were stampeded. You saw only a hideous malformation, a neural freak, a preposterous human machine. It was inconceivable that you should have been able to think clearly under the circumstances. Consider the matter in the sober aftermath of reason, and you must agree with me that it is really not more extraordinary that a man should function by mechanical means than that he should function at all."Ned Ferry and I never saw Squire Wall's again. When our hand-car the next morning landed us in Hazlehurst the news of Gettysburg and Vicksburg was on every tongue, in every face, and a telegram awaited Ferry which changed his destination to Meridian, a hundred miles farther to the east. He kept me with him at Hazlehurst for two days, to help him and the post-quartermaster get everything ready to be moved and saved if our cavalry should be driven east of the Jackson Railroad. But it was not, and by and by we were sundered and I went and became at length in practical and continuous reality one of Ferry's scouts--minus Ferry. Oh, the long hot toils and pains of those July and August days! the scorching suns, the stumbling night-marches, the aching knees, the groaning beasts, the scant, foul rations, the dust and sweat, the blood and the burials. To be sure, I speak of these hardships far more from sympathy than from experience, so much above the common lot of the long dust-choked column was that of our small band of scouts. After July our brigade operated mainly in the region of the Big Black, endeavoring, with others, to make the enemy confine his overflow meetings to the Vicksburg side of that unlovely stream. How busy our small troop was kept; and what fame we won! On a certain day we came out of a dried swamp in column and ambled half across a field to see if a brigade going by us at right angles in the shade of a wood at the field's edge might be ours. It was not, though they were Confederates; but one of its captains was sent out toward us with a squadron to see who we might be, in our puzzling uniform, and when, midway, he made us out and called back to his commander, "Ferry's scouts!" the whole column cheered us. I feel the thrill of it to this hour.

TWO:��How was she rude?�� he repeated.

TWO:Frank made a careful note of the figures indicating the height of the statue. He found that the whole structure, including the pedestal, measured sixty feet from the ground to the top of the head, and that the figure alone was forty-three feet high. It was in a sitting, or rather a squatting, posture, with the hands partly folded and turned upwards, with the knuckles touching each other. The eyes were closed, and there was an expression of calm repose on the features such as one rarely sees in statuary. There was something very grand and impressive in this towering statue, and the boys gazed upon it with unfeigned admiration.

TWO:"You will what!""NO," thundered the Doctor, suddenly leaping to his feet. "By heavens, no. Not that!"

TWO:"I thought you would say so," responded Fred, his eyes sparkling with animation, "and I want to write while everything is fresh in my mind. I am going to write at once."

TWO:"Well, isn't that what conjurers are supposed to do?" observed the Doctor, blandly.

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