f these
unfortunates--from twelve to fifteen hundred--live during the succeeding
five months. They were rigorously guarded night and day by sentinels
who were held answerable with their lives for the safe keeping of the
prisoners. During the daytime they stood or moved about uneasily. At
nights if any of them ventured to rise the sentinels had orders to fire
upon them. If they had been dogs they could not have been treated
worse. Being men, their sufferings were terrible--inconceivable. Ere
long many a poor fellow found a death-bed among the graves of that
gloomy enclosure. To add to their misery, friends were seldom permitted
to visit them, and those who did obtain leave were chiefly females, who
were exposed to the insults of the guards.

A week or so after their being shut up here, Andrew Black stood one
afternoon leaning against the headstone of a grave on which Quentin Dick
and Will Wallace were seated. It had been raining, and the grass and
their garments were very wet. A leaden sky overhead seemed to have
deepened their despair, for they remained silent for an unusually long
time.

"This _is_ awfu'!" said Black at last with a deep sigh. "If there was
ony chance o' makin' a dash an' fechtin' to the end, I wad tak' comfort;
but to be left here to sterve an' rot, nicht an' day, wi' naethin' to do
an' maist naethin' to think on--it's--it's awfu'!"

As the honest man could not get no further than this idea--and the idea
itself was a mere truism--no response was drawn from his companions, who
sat with clenched fists, staring vacantly before them. Probably the
first stage of incipient madness had set in with all of them.

"Did Jean give you any hope yesterday?" asked Wallace languidly; for he
had asked the same question every day since the poor girl had been
permitted to hold a brief conversation with her uncle at the iron gate,
towards which only one prisoner at a time was allowed to approach. The
answer had always been the same.

"Na, na. She bids me hope, indeed, in the Lord--an' she's right there;
but as for man, what can we hope frae _him_?"

"Ye may weel ask that!" exclaimed Quentin Dick, with sudden and bitter
emphasis. "Man indeed! It's my opeenion that man, when left to
hissel', is nae better than the deevil. I' faith, I think he's waur,
for he's mair contemptible."

"Ye may be right, Quentin, for a' I ken; but some men are no' left to
theirsel's. There's that puir young chiel Anderson,