"And how many does ye commonly lodge yere, when yer hotel's full?" I asked.
"I have had twenty in each, but fifteen is about as many as they comfortably hold."
"I reckon! And then the comfut moughtn't be much ter brag on."
The keeper soon invited us to walk into the adjoining basement. I was a few steps in advance of him, taking a straight course to the entrance, when a sentinel, pacing to and fro in the middle of the apartment, levelled his musket so as to bar my way, saying, as he did so,--
"Ye carn't pass yere, Sir. Ye must gwo round by the wall."
This drew my attention to the spot, and I noticed that a space, about fifteen feet square, in the centre of the room, and directly in front of the sentinel, had been recently dug up with a spade. While in all other places the ground was trodden to the hardness and color of granite, this spot seemed to be soft, and had the reddish-yellow hue of the "sacred soil." Another sentry was pacing to and fro on its other side, so that the place was completely surrounded! Why were they guarding it so closely? The reason flashed upon me, and I said to Turner;--
"I say, how many barr'ls hes ye in thar'?"
"Enough to blow this shanty to ----," he answered, curtly.
"I reckon! Put 'em thar' when thet feller Dahlgreen wus a-gwine ter rescue 'em,--the Yankees?"
He said no more, but that was enough to reveal the black, seething hell the Rebellion has brewed. Can there be any peace with miscreants who thus deliberately plan the murder, at one swoop, of hundreds of unarmed and innocent men?
In this room, seated on the ground, or leaning idly against the walls, were about a dozen poor fellows who the Judge told me were hostages, held for a similar number under sentence of death by our Government. Their dejected, homesick look, and weary, listless manner disclosed some of the horrors of imprisonment.
"Let us go," I said to the Colonel; "I have had enough of this."
"No,--you must see the up-stairs," said Turner. "It a'n't so gloomy up there."
It was not so gloomy, for some little sunlight did come in through the dingy windows; but the few prisoners in the upper rooms wore the same sad, disconsolate look as those in the lower story.
"It is not hard fare, or close quarters, that kills men," said Judge Ould to me; "it is homesickness; and the strongest and the bravest succumb to it first."