As he reached the middle of the road, his ears were assailed with the sharp click of a musket being cocked, and the harsh command: "Halt! halt, dah, I say!" Turning with a start to his left he saw not ten feet from him, a mounted patrol, the sound of whose approach had been masked by the deep dust of the road, into which his horse's hoofs sank noiselessly.
Frank, of course, yielded without a word, and when sent to the officer in command he told the old story about his being an employee of the Griswoldville shops, off on a leave of absence to make a visit to sick relatives.

But, unfortunately, his captors belonged to that section themselves, and speedily caught him in a maze of cross-questioning from which he could not extricate himself.

It also became apparent from his language that he was a Yankee, and it was not far from this to the conclusion that he was a spy--a conclusion to which the proximity of Sherman's lines, then less than twenty miles distant-greatly assisted.
By the next morning this belief had become so firmly fixed in the minds of the Rebels that Frank saw a halter dangling alarmingly near, and he concluded the wisest plan was to confess who he really was.
It was not the smallest of his griefs to realize by how slight a chance he had failed.

Had he looked down the road before he climbed the fence, or had he been ten minutes earlier or later, the patrol would not have been there, he could have gained the next field unperceived, and two more nights of successful progress would have taken him into Sherman's lines at Sand Mountain.

The patrol which caught him was on the look-out for deserters and shirking conscripts, who had become unusually numerous since the fall of Atlanta.
He was sent back to us at Savannah.