"Is there anything to prevent them taking us there ?" The dark face filled with inexpressible meaning.

I asked: "It isn't possible that there are any Yankees down there to interfere, is it ?" The great eyes flamed up with intelligence to tell me that I guessed aright; again he glanced nervously around to assure himself that no one was eavesdropping, and then he said in a whisper, just loud enough to be heard above the noise of the moving train: "De Yankees took Wilmington yesterday mawning." The news startled me, but it was true, our troops having driven out the Rebel troops, and entered Wilmington, on the preceding day--the 22d of February, 1865, as I learned afterwards.

How this negro came to know more of what was going on than his masters puzzled me much.

That he did know more was beyond question, since if the Rebels in whose charge we were had known of Wilmington's fall, they would not have gone to the trouble of loading us upon the cars and hauling us one, hundred miles in the direction of a City which had come into the hands of our men.
It has been asserted by many writers that the negros had some occult means of diffusing important news among the mass of their people, probably by relays of swift runners who traveled at night, going twenty-five or thirty miles and back before morning.

Very astonishing stories are told of things communicated in this way across the length or breadth of the Confederacy.