f Fortress Monroe, the
embrasure of which was closed with a heavy iron grating. The two doors
which communicated with the gunner's room were closed with heavy double
shutters fastened with crossbars and padlocks. The side openings were
sealed with fresh masonry.

Two sentinels with loaded muskets paced the floor without a moment's
pause day or night. Two other sentinels and a commissioned officer
occupied the gunner's room, the door and window of which were securely
fastened. Sentinels were stationed on the parapet overhead whose steady
tramp day and night made sleep impossible.

The embrasure opened on the big ditch which surrounds the fort--sixty
feet wide and ten feet deep in salt water. Beyond the ditch, on the
glacis, was a double line of sentinels and in the casemate rooms on
either side of his prison were quartered that part of the guard which
was not on post.

To render rest or comfort impossible a lighted lamp was placed within
three feet of the prisoner's eyes and kept burning brightly all night.
His jailer knew he had but one eye whose sight remained and that he was
a chronic sufferer from neuralgia.

His escape from Fortress Monroe was a physical impossibility without one
of the extraordinary precautions taken. The purpose of these
arrangements could have only been to inflict pain, humiliation and
possibly to take his life. He had never been robust since the breakdown
of his health on the Western plains. Worn by privation and exposure,
approaching sixty years of age, he was in no condition physically to
resist disease.

The damp walls, the coarse food, the loss of sleep caused by the tramp
of sentinels inside his room, outside and on the roof over his head and
the steady blaze of a lamp in his eyes at night within forty-eight hours
had completed his prostration.

But his jailers were not content.

On May twenty-third, Captain Titlow entered his cell with two
blacksmiths bearing a pair of heavy leg irons coupled together by a
ponderous chain.

"I am sorry to inform you, sir," the polite young officer began, "that I
have been ordered to put you in irons."

"Has General Miles given that order?"

"He has."

"I wish to see him at once, please."

"General Miles has just left the fort, sir."

"You can postpone the execution of your order until I see him?"

"I have been warned against delay."

"No soldier ever gave such an order," was the stern reply; "no soldier
should receive or execute it--"