ay, and we knew that something unusual was about to
take place. They paused at our door, threw it open, called the names
of our seven companions, and took them out to the room opposite,
putting the Tennesseeans in with us. One of our boys, named Robinson,
was sick of a fever, and had to be raised to his feet, and supported
out of the room.

With throbbing hearts we asked one another the meaning of these
strange proceedings. Some supposed they were to receive their
acquittal; others, still more sanguine, believed they were taken out
of the room to be paroled, preparatory to an exchange.

I was sick, too, but rose to my feet, oppressed with a nameless fear.
A half crazy Kentuckian, who was with the Tennesseeans, came to me and
wanted to play a game of cards. I struck the greasy pack out of his
hands, and bade him leave me.

A moment after, the door opened, and George D. Wilson entered, his
step firm and his form erect, but his countenance pale as death. Some
one asked a solution of the dreadful mystery, in a whisper, for his
face silenced every one.

"_We are to be executed immediately_," was the awful reply, whispered
with thrilling distinctness. The others came in all tied, ready for
the scaffold. Then came the farewells--farewells with no hope of
meeting again in this world! It was a moment that seemed an age of
measureless sorrow.

Our comrades were brave; they were soldiers, and had often looked
death in the face on the battle-field. They were ready, if need be, to
die for their country; but to die on the _scaffold_--to die as
murderers die--seemed almost too hard for human nature to bear.

Then, too, the prospect of a future world, into which they were thus
to be hurled without a moment's preparation, was black and appalling.
Most of them had been careless, and had no hope beyond the grave.
Wilson was a professed infidel, and many a time had argued the truth
of the Christian religion with me for a half day at a time; but in
this awful hour he said to me:

"Pittenger, I believe you are right, now! Oh! try to be better
prepared when you come to die than I am." Then, laying his hand on my
head with a muttered "God bless you," we parted.

Shadrack was profane and reckless, but good-hearted and merry. Now,
turning to us with a voice, the forced calmness of which was more
affecting than a wail of agony, he said:

"Boys, I am not prepared to meet Jesus."

When asked by some of us in tears to think of heaven, h