Ard found--and bade me enter. My reflections could not have been more gloomy if the celebrated inscription, _Dante_, placed over the gates of hell, had been written above the massive iron door. "All hope abandon, ye who enter here." My feelings were terrible when the jailor turned the key in the lock, secured the heavy iron bar that crossed the door, and left me. Never before had I been locked up as a prisoner, and now it was no trivial matter--a few days or weeks. There was absolutely no hope ahead. I was there as a criminal, and too well did I realize the character of the Southern people, to believe that they would be fastidious about proof. Life is held too cheap in that country to cause them a long delay in its disposal. In that hour, my most distressing thought was of my friends at home, and particularly of my mother--thinking what would be their sorrow when they heard of my ignominious fate--if indeed they ever heard, for I had given an assumed name. That all my young hopes and ambitions, my fond dreams of being useful, should perish, as I then had no doubt they would, on a Southern scaffold, seemed unbearable in the extreme. But only one moment did these thoughts sweep over me; the next they were rejected as not calculated to profit in the least. My first action was to borrow from my Union companion his blankets, of which he had a plentiful
