g the sheriff's party. One of the Hooper boys, with
characteristic recklessness and to the consternation of the others,
stood boldly out on a great rock in plain sight of his pursuers (if they
had chanced to look up), half resolved to try his rifle at the last of
the Watsons.]

That I was eager to follow goes without saying, but our keepers had
learned our slippery character. All the way to Asheville, day and night,
we were watched with sleepless vigilance. There we gave our parole,
Smith and I, and secured thereby comfortable quarters in the court-house
with freedom to stroll about the town. Old Man Tigue and the Vincents
were committed to the county jail. We were there a week, part of my
spare time being employed in helping a Confederate company officer make
out a correct pay-roll.

When our diminished ranks had been recruited by four more officers from
Columbia, who had been captured near the frozen summit of the Great
Smoky Mountains, we were started on a journey of sixty miles to
Greenville in South Carolina. The night before our arrival we were
quartered at a large farm-house. The prisoners, together with the
privates of the guard, were allotted a comfortable room, which
contained, however, but a single bed. The officer in charge had retired
to enjoy the hospitality of the family. A flock of enormous white
pullets were roosting in the yard. Procuring an iron kettle from the
servants, who looked with grinning approval upon all forms of chicken
stealing, we sallied forth to the capture. Twisting the precious necks
of half a dozen, we left them to die in the grass while we pierced the
side of a sweet-potato mound. Loaded with our booty we retreated to the
house undiscovered, and spent the night in cooking in one pot instead of
sleeping in one bed. The fowls were skinned instead of plucked, and,
vandals that we were, dressed on the backs of the picture-frames taken
down from the walls.

At Greenville we were lodged in the county jail to await the
reconstruction of railway-bridges, when we were to be transported to
Columbia. The jail was a stone structure, two stories in height, with
halls through the center on both floors and square rooms on each side.
The lock was turned on our little party of six in one of these upper
rooms, having two grated windows looking down on the walk. Through the
door which opened on the hall a square hole was cut as high as one's
face and large enough to admit the passage of a plate. Asi