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For the first time in her life Lady Clare felt a cold shiver of fear run through her. There was, happily, a fence between them, and she devoutly hoped that Valders-Roan was not a jumper. At that moment, however, two men appeared next to the huge horse, and Lady Clare heard the sound of breaking fence-rails.
In an hour the whistle of the saw began to rise in key higher and higher, and as the men slowed up carefully, it gave a little high squeak of triumph, and with a "kerchunk" dropped to the ground. With more cries and laughter, two men rushed for fence-rails to be used as levers. There was a chorus now: Soak him in de water, Up, now! Soak him in de water, Up, now! O Lawd, soak long!
When all was over Turner escaped to the woods, dug a hole under some fence-rails and lived there for six weeks, coming out only at midnight for food. Driven thence by discovery, he still managed to hide here and there about the plantations in spite of a whole country of armed men in search of him, until at last he was accidentally confronted in the bush by a white man with levelled rifle.
Here and there the logs lie in long ranks upon the shelving beaches, mixed with the drift of trees and fence-rails, and frames of corn-cribs and hencoops, and even house walls, which the freshets have brought down and left stranded.
Axes there were none; and had not the fence-rails afforded a supply of firewood, the sufferings of the troops would have been intense. As it was, despite the example of their commander, they pushed forward but slowly through the bitter weather.
It wasn't hard to find, for it had grown so big and stretched almost to the fence-rails now, and was racing along towards the Pond, growing wider and wider every minute just like Marmaduke's eyes. "Crackey! Sposin' there should be a flood!" exclaimed Jehosophat. "Wouldn't that be fine!" said Marmaduke. "Fine!" Jehosophat cried. "What would you do?
In conversation with me, the soldiers of the Fifteenth Corps, with whom I was on the most familiar terms, spoke of the affair of the 28th as the easiest thing in the world; that, in fact, it was a common slaughter of the enemy; they pointed out where the rebel lines had been, and how they themselves had fired deliberately, had shot down their antagonists, whose bodies still lay unburied, and marked plainly their lines of battle, which must have halted within easy musket-range of our men, who were partially protected by their improvised line of logs and fence-rails.
It was almost evening when he followed a furrowed brown road that led westward. Above the bleak line of the horizon the sun hung, a red gold disk. There were other reds, too, along the way the sumac flaming scarlet against the gray fence-rails; the sweetbrier, crimson-spotted with berries; the creeper, clinging with ruddy fingers to dead tree-trunks; the maple leaves rosy with first frosts.
Hundreds of fires were soon started with the fence-rails, and the men were busy roasting the ears. Thomas and I were walking up and down the road which led to the church, discussing the chances of the movement, which he thought were extra-hazardous, and our path carried us by a fire at which a soldier was roasting his corn.
He found a spot which he judged safe, dug a hole under a pile of fence-rails in a field, and lay there for six weeks, only leaving it for a few moments at midnight to obtain water from a neighboring spring. Food he had previously provided, without discovery, from a house near by. Meanwhile an unbounded variety of rumors went flying through the State.
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