and
his coadjutors. The manner of the fraud varied with circumstances, but
in general it was worked by five of Rose's men, after being counted at
or near the head of the line, stooping down and running toward the foot
of the ranks, where a few moments later they were counted a second time,
thus making Ross's book balance. The whole five, however, could not
always do this undiscovered, and perhaps but three of the number could
repeat. These occasional mishaps threatened to dethrone the reason of
the puzzled clerk; but in the next count the "repeaters" would succeed
in their game, and for the time all went well, until one day some of the
prisoners took it into their heads, "just for the fun of the thing," to
imitate the repeaters. Unconscious of the curses that the party were
mentally hurling at them, the meddlers' sole purpose was to make "Little
Ross" mad. In this they certainly met with signal success, for the
reason of the mystified clerk seemed to totter as he repeated the count
over and over in the hope of finding out how one careful count would
show that three prisoners were missing and the next an excess of
fifteen. Finally Ross, lashed into uncontrollable fury by the sarcastic
remarks of his employers and the heartless merriment of the grinning
Yanks before him, poured forth his goaded soul as follows:

"Now, gentlemen, look yere. I can count a hundred as good as any blank
man in this yere town, but I'll be blank blanked if I can count a
hundred of you blanked Yankees. Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho:
there's eight or ten of you-uns yere that ain't yere!"

This extraordinary accusation "brought down the house," and the
Confederate officers and guards, and finally Ross himself, were caught
by the resistless contagion of laughter that shook the rafters of Libby.

The officials somehow found a balance that day on the books, and the
danger was for this once over, to the infinite relief of Rose and his
anxious comrades. But the Confederates appeared dissatisfied with
something, and came up-stairs next morning with more officers and with
double the usual number of guards; and some of these were now stationed
about the room so as to make it next to impossible to work the repeating
device successfully. On this day, for some reason, there were but two
men in the cellar, and these were Major B.B. McDonald and Captain I.N.
Johnson.

The count began as usual, and despite the guard in rear, two of the
party attempt