, so we were brought back and returned to our old
quarters. For a week or more we loitered about the now nearly-abandoned
prison; skulked and crawled around the dismal mud-tents like the ghostly
denizens of some Potter's Field, who, for some reason had been allowed to
return to earth, and for awhile creep painfully around the little
hillocks beneath which they had been entombed.

A few score, whose vital powers were strained to the last degree of
tension, gave up the ghost, and sank to dreamless rest. It mattered now
little to these when Sherman came, or when Kilpatrick's guidons should
flutter through the forest of sighing pines, heralds of life, happiness,
and home--

After life's fitful fever they slept well
Treason had done its worst. Nor steel nor poison:
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Could touch them farther.

One day another order came for us to be loaded on the cars, and over to
the railroad we went again in the same fashion as before. The
comparatively few of us who were still able to walk at all well, loaded
ourselves down with the bundles and blankets of our less fortunate
companions, who hobbled and limped--many even crawling on their hands and
knees--over the hard, frozen ground, by our sides.

Those not able to crawl even, were taken in wagons, for the orders were
imperative not to leave a living prisoner behind.

At the railroad we found two trains awaiting us. On the front of each
engine were two rude white flags, made by fastening the halves of meal
sacks to short sticks. The sight of these gave us some hope, but our
belief that Rebels were constitutional liars and deceivers was so firm
and fixed, that we persuaded ourselves that the flags meant nothing more
than some wilful delusion for us.

Again we started off in the direction of Wilmington, and traversed the
same country described in the previous chapter. Again Andrews and I
found ourselves in the next box car to the passenger coach containing the
Rebel officers. Again we cut a hole through the end, with our saw, and
again found a darky servant sitting on the rear platform. Andrews went
out and sat down alongside of him, and found that he was seated upon a
large gunny-bag sack containing the cooked rations of the Rebel officers.

The intelligence that there was something there worth taking Andrews
communicated to me by an expressive signal, of which soldiers campaig