"
After half an hour's waiting, I was conducted to a room on the third
story, No. 20, and in a few minutes experienced that great rarity of a
"fresh sensation," finding myself--for the very first time in my
life--fairly under lock and key.
I had been so "harried" of late, that I felt a certain relief in being
settled _somewhere_. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent in
making acquaintance with the Baltimorean blockade-runner, my room-mate,
and in exchanging dreary prison civilities with the cells either side,
through little tunnels pierced in the wall by former prisoners, which
allowed passage to anything of a calibre not exceeding that of a rolled
newspaper. A deep, narrow trough, ingeniously excavated in a
pine-splinter, enabled us to pledge each other in mutual libations,
devoted to our better luck and speedy release. The neighbors, with whom
I chiefly held commune, were an Episcopal clergyman and a captain in the
Confederate army. Of these, more hereafter. I breathed more freely when
the temporary absence of my room-mate, for exercise, left me alone--for
the first time since my capture--with my saddle-bags. They had been in
Northern custody for four days, and subjected to the severest scrutiny:
nevertheless, they still held certain documents that I was right glad to
see vanish in the red heat of a fierce log fire.
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