making acquaintance with the Baltimorean blockade-runner, my room-mate,
and in exchanging dreary prison civilities with the cells either side,
through little tunnels pierced in the wall by former prisoners, which
allowed passage to anything of a calibre not exceeding that of a rolled
newspaper. A deep, narrow trough, ingeniously excavated in a
pine-splinter, enabled us to pledge each other in mutual libations,
devoted to our better luck and speedy release. The neighbors, with whom
I chiefly held commune, were an Episcopal clergyman and a captain in the
Confederate army. Of these, more hereafter. I breathed more freely when
the temporary absence of my room-mate, for exercise, left me alone--for
the first time since my capture--with my saddle-bags. They had been in
Northern custody for four days, and subjected to the severest scrutiny:
nevertheless, they still held certain documents that I was right glad to
see vanish in the red heat of a fierce log fire.

CHAPTER IX.

CAGED BIRDS.

The miserable first-waking--dreariest of all hours that follow a great
loss or disaster--came late to me. I had gone through a certain amount
of knocking-about--mental and bodily--in the last week; and, for eight
nights, the nearest approach to a bed had been the extempore couch of a
railway-car. So, on an unhappy emaciated palliasse, covered by a dusty
horse-rug (it took me four days to weary the jailer into a concession of
sheets), I slept, all noises notwithstanding, far into my first
prison-day. It was provokingly brilliant and warm; indeed I must, in
justice to the Weather Office, allow, that its benignancy has scarcely
been interrupted, since I ceased to care whether skies were foul or
fair. My recollections of that first day are rather vague; but my
impression is, that I had a good deal to think about, and did not in the
least know how to begin. I paced up and down, as long as my knee would
allow; it was still stiff and painful, though healing fast. In a room
twelve feet by eight, you square the circle much too often for pleasure;
but it was a week before I had any other exercise. Then, I believe, I
made some attempts to improve the acquaintance of my room-mate.

He was not sullen, but, at first, somewhat saturnine and silent. The
fact was that, for many days, he had been fasting from the luxuries
dearest to every American heart--whisky and tobacco; for all money and
clothes had been taken from him at the Provost Marshal's