egions of misery into heaven itself.

Handkerchiefs and combs, writing-materials and stamps, were among the
first requisites of the new-comers. A few were able to write; and for
the others, the ladies were but too happy to apprise the friends at home
of their arrival, even if recovery were doubtful. In taking the names of
the men, I came to a white-headed patriarch, and expressed surprise at
finding him in the army. His name was R. B. Darling; and as I wrote it
down, he said: "You might as well put 'Reverend' before it, for I am a
Methodist minister. I lived in Greenville, Green County, Tennessee, and
when this Rebellion came on, I preached and preached, until it did not
seem to do any good; so I took up the musket to try what fighting would
do." He had left a wife and six children at home, from whom he had heard
only once, and then through a friend taken prisoner six months after
himself. He had been down with "those fiends," as he called them,
twenty-one months, and had been in nine different prisons. He had worked
for the Rebels--only at the point of the bayonet--while his strength
lasted, in digging wells. He had passed three months in the iron cage at
Atlanta, and three months in Castle Thunder under threat of being tried
for his life for some disrespectful speech about Rebeldom; finally,
after all the perils of Libby Prison and Belle Isle, he was free once
more. "These are tears of gratitude," he said, in answer to the welcome
given him, as they rolled down his furrowed cheeks; "it is the first
word of kindness that I have heard for so long." On soiled scraps of
paper he had the names of many of his fellow-prisoners. He had promised,
should he ever escape, to let their friends at home know when and where
they had died. Letters were at once written, carrying the painful
certainty of loss to anxious hearts. To his own family it was useless to
write, for the Rebels surrounded his home, cutting off postal
communication. He brought with him six little copies of the Gospels, one
for each child at home; they had been given to him at the South, having
been sent over by the British and Foreign Bible Society for
distribution. Surely no men ever more needed the promises of divine
consolation than the captives whom these volumes reached.

It was difficult to restrict the diet of this old hero. After eating an
enormous meal of soup, meat, vegetables, pudding, and bread, his
appetite would not be in the least satisfied; he woul