On the morning of the sixth day Mr. Firth, the guide whom Miss Gerard's brother had sent to pilot her through the lines, arrived at Jackson. He was a Scotchman by birth, although long a resident in the South, and was between fifty and sixty years of age: his beard and locks were sprinkled with gray; under bushy eyebrows his keen eyes flashed with intelligence and indicated decision and reserve; but the gravity of his features showed the imprint of perpetual sadness. Heavily built and athletic, he was withal a handsome and very noticeable man. At this time Mr. Firth was in the secret service of President Davis, but exactly in what department Helen could not learn.
Giving her his hand with a hearty, honest grasp, Mr. Firth announced himself to Miss Gerard as the guide her brother had appointed by telegraph to conduct her to the Mississippi. He requested her to have her small trunk ready to forward at once by army transportation, stating that she would find it at the destined point on the river, and that as soon as she herself was ready they would start. In less than an hour she was prepared, and seating herself in a low, old-fashioned country vehicle drawn by one horse, they soon left Jackson in the distance.
All that day they journeyed through rough, untrodden forests. Often they were forced to ford streams which came up to the box of the wagon and obliged the travellers to lift their feet on the seat to escape a ducking. Between one and two in the morning they reached Raymond, and found a hospitable welcome in the house of a Mr. Moore on the edge of the town.
Although the hour was so unseasonable, a warm supper was at once prepared for the weary travellers. On the following morning Mr. Firth informed Helen that he should leave her in those quarters for four days while he went away on business of the secret service. But instead of four days, three weeks had passed before he returned. Early on the morning following his arrival they were up and prepared to start, provided by their hospitable friends with lunches of cornbread and meat stowed in the pouches of the saddles, as for the future they were to journey on horseback; and Miss Gerard was also furnished with a black skirt of Mrs. Moore's remodelled into a riding-habit. With eyes swimming in tears Helen bade farewell to those who, though strangers, had welcomed her as a friend, and with downcast heads, under the rays of the hot morning sun, the travellers rode away, prepared to penetrate the tangled forests of Mississippi. But first they crossed the clearing memorable as the battle-field of Raymond, fought over when General Grant was making his march on Vicksburg. The traces of the conflict that terminated so sadly for the Confederate States were still everywhere visible, and the trees showed abundant signs of the hailstorm of war which had swept over them. Little thought Helen as she rode over those trampled fields that her fate was mysteriously linked with one who had bravely borne himself in that battle, and whose face she had not yet seen, while here it was that, unknown to her, his destiny first crossed her life.