He's telled on ye ter git the reward! They's 'spectin' the calvary uvery minnit. Hark! I yere's 'em now!"

While she yet spoke he heard the heavy tramp of horsemen along the highway. Placing her hand in his, the woman fled hurriedly to the woods. When they had gone about a mile, she paused, and said to him:

"I karn't go no furder. I must git home or they'll 'spect suthin'. When they find ye's gone, the calvary'll make fur the landin'. Ye must go up the river, an' 'bout two mile frum yere ye'll find a yawl. It'r chained, but ye kin break thet. Doan't cross over-a hull regiment is 'camped on t'other side -put up the river so fur as ye kin."

With a mutual "God bless ye," they parted. Bible made his way to the river, and narrowly inspected its banks, but no boat was to be seen! He had spent two hours in the search, when he came to a bend in the stream which gave him an uninterrupted view of it for miles below. All along the river the air was alive with torches hurrying to and fro. He knew his pursuers would soon be upon him, and ejaculating a short prayer, in which he reminded the LORD that the information he carried in his head was of "no oncommon vallu, orter be got ter the giniral ter onst, an' wouldn't be uv no yerthly use" if he were hanged just then, he crept down to the water. Entangled in the underbrush just above him was a large log, the estray property of some up-country sawyer. Dropping himself into the water, he made his way to the log, and, laying down on at it full length, paddled out into the river. When he had reached the middle of the stream, he let himself drift down with the current, and in a short time was among his pursuers. A thousand torches blazing on either bank lit up the narrow river with a

lurid glare, and made the smallest object on its surface distinctly visible. Knowing that if he kept his position he would certainly be seen, Bible rolled off into the water, turned over on his back, and, keeping one hand upon the log, floated along beside it. When he came opposite to the landing, he heard one cavalryman say to another:

"See! thar's a log; moughtent the durned critter be on thet?"

"No," replied the other; "thar's nothin' on it. Yer eyes is no better 'n moles."

"Wall, I'll guv it a shot, anyhow," rejoined the first, and fired his carbine. The bullet glanced from the log, and struck the water a few feet from the scout, The one shot attracted others, and for a few minutes the balls fell thickly around him, but he escaped unhurt! The GoD to whom he had prayed shielded him, and brought him safely out of the hands of his enemies. In six days, after unparalleled hardships, he reached the Union lines.

A few days before I left Murfreesboro, Bible started on another trip into the enemies' lines to establish a chain of spy stations up to Bragg's head-quarters. He succeeded in the perilous enterprise, and, when I last heard of him, was pursuing his usual avocation, doing really more service to the country than many a star-shouldered gentleman who is talked of now in the newspapers, and may be read of centuries hence in history.

If I have outlined his character distinctly, the reader has perceived that he is brave, simple-hearted, outspoken, hospitable, enterprising, industrious, loyal to liberty, earnest in his convictions though ignorantly confounding names with thingsa good husband and father, with a quiet humor which flavors

character as Worcester sauce flavors a good dinner, a practical wisdom which "trusts in the LORD, but keeps its powder dry," some talent for bragging, and that intensity of nature and disposition to magnify every thing (illustrated in his stories and conversation) which leads the Southerner to do nothing by halves, to throw his whole soul into whatever he undertakes, to be, like Jeremiah's figs, "if good, very good; if bad, not fit to feed the pigs." Though morally and intellectually superior to the mass of "poor Southern whites," he is still a good representative of the class. They nearly all possess the same traits that he does, and differ from him only in degree, not in kind. That is saying little against them, for one might travel a whole summer's day in our Northern cities, and not meet many men who, in all that makes true manhood, are his equals.

PROFESSOR CAIRNES, in his very valuable and generally accurate work on the Slave Power (pages 54, 55), says:

"In the Southern States, no less than five millions of human beings are now said to exist in a condition little removed from savage life, eking out a wretched subsistence by hunting, by fishing, by hiring themselves out for occasional jobs, and by plunder. Combining the restlessness and contempt for regular industry peculiar to the savage, with the vices of the prolétaire of civilized communities, these people make up a class at once degraded and dangerous; and constantly re-enforced, as they are, by all that is idle, worthless, and lawless among the population of the neighboring States, form an inexhaustible preserve of ruffianism, ready at hand for all the worst purposes of Southern ambition. Such are the " mean whites" or "white trash"

of the Southern States.

This class comprises, as I have

said, five millions of human beings-about seven-tenths of the whole white population."

This opinion of Professor Cairnes is no doubt held by fully nineteen-twentieths of the people of the Northern States and of England. But it is a great-a very great error. Having read of, or seen, the wretched specimens of humanity who loiter about the railway stations, or hover around the large plantations

on the great Southern thoroughfares, they have jumped to the conclusion that they represent "seven-tenths of the whole white population" of the South! The very idea is preposterous, for if it were so, one-half of the Southern people would be paupers, and no community could exist which had to support that proportion of non-producers. But it is not so. The great mass of "poor whites" are superior (and I say this with due deliberation, and after sixteen years' acquaintance with them) to every other class of un-cultivated men, save our Northern farmers, on the globe. They all were born in this country, and have imbibe from our institutions-distorted and perverted as they are at the South-a sturdy independence, and an honest regard for each other's rights, which make them, though of Scotch, ScotchIrish, or English descent, better soldiers, better citizens, and better men than the over-worked, ignorant, half-starved, turbulent, and degraded peasantry whom England vomits upon the North to create riots, rule in our elections, and support such politicians as Fernando Wood.

There is at the South such a class as Mr. Cairnes speaks of. They are appropriately called "mean trash," and "eke out a wretched subsistence by hunting, by fishing, by hiring themselves out for occasional jobs, and by plunder," but they are a comparatively small class. The census shows that they cannot number above half a million.

These people do combine "the restlessness and contempt for regular industry peculiar to the savage, with the vices of the prolétaire of civilized communities," are "at once degraded and dangerous," and form a "preserve of ruffianism, ready at hand for all the worst purposes of Southern ambition." In fact, I was about to add that all the ruffianism of the South is confined to