d that it was long enough to touch the cellar base and
protrude a foot or so above the kitchen floor. By this means he easily
descended, leaving Hamilton to keep watch above.

The storm still raged fiercely, and the faint beams of a street-lamp
revealed the muffled form of the sentinel slowly pacing his beat and
carrying his musket at "secure" arms. Creeping softly toward him along
the cellar wall, he now saw that what he had supposed was a door was
simply a naked opening to the street; and further inspection disclosed
the fact that there was but one sentinel on the south side of the
prison. Standing in the dark shadow, he could easily have touched this
man with his hand as he repeatedly passed him. Groping about, he found
various appurtenances indicating that the south end of this cellar was
used for a carpenter's shop, and that the north end was partitioned off
into a series of small cells with padlocked doors, and that through each
door a square hole, a foot in diameter, was cut. Subsequently it was
learned that these dismal cages were alternately used for the
confinement of "troublesome prisoners"--_i.e._, those who had
distinguished themselves by ingenious attempts to escape--and also for
runaway slaves, and Union spies under sentence of death.

At the date of Rose's first reconnaissance to this cellar, these cells
were vacant and unguarded. The night was far spent, and Rose proceeded
to return to the kitchen, where Hamilton was patiently waiting for him.

The very next day a rare good fortune befell Rose. By an agreement
between the commissioners of exchange, several bales of clothing and
blankets had been sent by our government to the famishing Union
prisoners on Belle Isle, a number of whom had already frozen to death. A
committee of Union officers then confined in Libby, consisting of
General Neal Dow, Colonel Alexander von Shrader, Lieut.-Colonel Joseph
F. Boyd, and Colonel Harry White, having been selected by the
Confederates to supervise the distribution of the donation, Colonel
White had, by a shrewd bit of finesse, "confiscated" a fine rope by
which one of the bales was tied, and this he now presented to Colonel
Rose. It was nearly a hundred feet long, an inch thick, and almost new.

It was hardly dark the following night before Rose and Hamilton were
again in the kitchen, and as soon as all was quiet Rose fastened his
rope to one of the supporting posts, took up the floor-plank as before,
and both men