He had barely done so when a detail of Confederate guards entered
the kitchen from the Carey street door, and, headed by an officer,
marched straight in his direction. Meantime the party had disappeared up
the stairway and swiftly made their way over their prostrate comrades'
forms to their proper sleeping-places. Rose, being the last up, and
having the floor to fix, had now no time to disappear like his
companions, at least without suspicious haste. He accordingly took a
seat at one of the tables, and, putting an old pipe in his mouth, coolly
awaited the approach of the Confederates. The officer of the guard came
along, swinging his lantern almost in his face, stared at him for a
second, and without a remark or a halt marched past him and ascended
with his escort to the Chickamauga room. The entrance of a guard and
their march around the prison, although afterward common enough after
taps, was then an unusual thing, causing much talk among the prisoners,
and to the mind of Rose and his fellow-plotters was indicative of
aroused suspicion on the part of the Confederates.

The whispering groups of men next day, and the number of his eager
questioners, gave the leader considerable concern; and Hamilton
suggested, as a measure of safety rather than choice, that some of the
mischievous talk of escape would be suppressed by increasing the party.
This was acted upon; the men, like the rest, were put under oath by
Rose, and the party was thus increased to four hundred and twenty. This
force would have been enough to overpower the prison guard in a few
minutes, but the swift alarm certain to ensue in the streets and spread
like wild-fire over Richmond, the meager information possessed by the
prisoners as to the strength and position of the nearest Federal
troops, the strongly guarded labyrinth of breastworks that encircled the
city, and the easy facilities for instant pursuit at the command of the
Confederates, put the success of such an undertaking clearly out of the
range of probability, unless, indeed, some unusual favoring contingency
should arise, such as the near approach of a cooeperating column of
Federal cavalry.

Nor was this an idle dream, as the country now knows, for even at this
period General Kilpatrick was maturing his plans for that bold
expedition for the rescue of the prisoners at Richmond and Belle Isle in
which the lamented and heroic young cripple, Colonel Ulric Dahlgren,
lost his life. Rose saw that a br