stagger across to the rope-ladder.

He had made more than double the distance that had been accomplished
under the system of reliefs on any previous day, and the non-appearance
of the Confederates encouraged the hope that another day, without
interruption, would see the work completed. He therefore determined to
refresh himself by a night's sleep for the finish. The drooping spirits
of his party were revived by the report of his progress and his
unalterable confidence.

Monday morning dawned, and the great prison with its twelve hundred
captives was again astir. The general crowd did not suspect the
suppressed excitement and anxiety of the little party that waited
through that interminable day, which they felt must determine the fate
of their project.

Rose had repeated the instructions of the day before, and again
descended to Rat Hell with McDonald for his only helper. Johnson
reported all quiet, and McDonald taking up his former duties at the
tunnel's mouth, Rose once more entered with his chisel. It was now the
seventeenth day since the present tunnel was begun, and he resolved it
should be the last. Hour after hour passed, and still the busy chisel
was plied, and still the little wooden box with its freight of earth
made its monotonous trips from the digger to his comrade and back again.

From the early morning of Monday, February 8, 1864, until an hour after
midnight the next morning his work went on. As midnight approached, Rose
was nearly a physical wreck: the perspiration dripped from every pore of
his exhausted body; food he could not have eaten, if he had had it. His
labors thus far had given him a somewhat exaggerated estimate of his
physical powers. The sensation of fainting was strange to him, but his
staggering senses warned him that to faint where he was meant at once
his death and burial. He could scarcely inflate his lungs with the
poisonous air of the pit; his muscles quivered with increasing weakness
and the warning spasmodic tremor which their unnatural strain induced;
his head swam like that of a drowning person.

By midnight he had struck and passed beyond a post which he felt must be
in the yard. During the last few minutes he had directed his course
upward, and to relieve his cramped limbs he turned upon his back. His
strength was nearly gone; the feeble stream of air which his comrade was
trying, with all his might, to send to him from a distance of
fifty-three feet could no longer reach