The next morning Vincent and his companions were put into the train and
sent to Alexandria. They had no reason to complain of their treatment
upon the way. They were well fed, and after their starvation diet for
the last six weeks their rations seemed to them actually luxurious. The
Federal troops in Alexandria, who were for the most part young recruits
who had just arrived from the North and West, looked with astonishment
upon these thin and ragged men, several of whom were barefooted. Was it
possible that such scarecrows as these could in every battle have driven
back the well-fed and cared-for Northern soldiers!

"Are they all like this?" one burly young soldier from a Western State
asked their guard.

"That's them, sir," the sergeant in charge of the party replied. "Not
much to look at, are they? But, by gosh, you should see them fight! You
wouldn't think of their looks then."

"If that's soldiering," the young farmer said solemnly, "the sooner I am
back home again the better. But it don't seem to me altogether strange
as they should fight so hard, because I should say they must look upon
it as a comfort to be killed rather than to live like that."

A shout of laughter from the prisoners showed the young rustic that the
objects of his pity did not consider life to be altogether intolerable
even under such circumstances, and he moved away meditating on the
discomforts of war, and upon the remarks that would be made were he to
return home in so sorrowful a plight as that of these Confederate
prisoners.

"I bargained to fight," he said, "and though I don't expect I shall like
it, I shan't draw back when the time comes; but as to being starved till
you are nigh a skeleton, and going about barefooted and in such rags as
a tramp wouldn't look at, it aint reasonable." And yet, had he known it,
among those fifteen prisoners more than half were possessors of wide
estates, and had been brought up from their childhood in the midst of
luxuries such as the young farmer never dreamed of.

Among many of the soldiers sympathy took a more active form, and men
pressed forward and gave packets of tobacco, cigars, and other little
presents to them, while two or three pressed rolls of dollar notes into
their hands, with words of rough kindness.

"There aint no ill feeling in us, Rebs. You have done your work like
men, and no doubt you thinks your cause is right, just as we does; but
it's all over now, and maybe our turn will come