m the gutters of New York
could have really stumbled on the facts to which they have sworn. Find
who these men are. Get their records to the last hour of the day you
track them--and report to me."

Socola organized a force of detectives and set them to work. The task
was a difficult one. He found that Conover and his pals were protected
by the unlimited power of the National Government.

CHAPTER XLVI

THE TORTURE

While the prisoner fought to save his reason in the dungeon at Fortress
Monroe, his wife was denied the right to lift her hand in his defense.
No communication was allowed between them except through his jailer.

On arrival in Savannah Mrs. Davis and her children were compelled to
walk through the blazing heat the long distance from the wharf uptown,
the whole party trudging immigrant fashion through the streets. Her
sister carried the baby. Mrs. Davis and the two little boys and Maggie
followed with parcels, and Robert, her faithful black man, brought up
the rear with the baggage.

The people of Savannah, on learning of their arrival, treated their
prisoners with the utmost kindness. Every home in the city was thrown
open to them. Her children had been robbed of all their clothing except
what they wore. The neighbors hurried in with clothes.

The newspaper of Savannah of the new regime, _The Republican_, published
and republished with gleeful comments the most sensational accounts of
the brutal scene of the shackling of Davis. Maggie composed a prayer and
taught her little brothers to repeat it in concert for their grace at
the table morning, noon and night:

"Dear Lord, give our father something he can eat, and keep him strong,
and bring him back to us with eyes that can see and in his good senses,
to his little children, for Jesus' sake."

Nearly every day the child who composed the prayer was so moved by its
recital she would run from the table and dry her tears in the next room
before she could eat.

Hourly scenes of violence increased between the whites and the inflamed
blacks. A negro sentinel leveled his gun at little Jeff and threatened
to shoot him for calling him "Uncle." With prayers and tears the mother
sent her children away to the home of a friend in Montreal.

A year passed before President Johnson in answer to the wife's desperate
pleading permitted her to visit her husband in prison. She arrived from
Montreal on the cold raw morning of May 10, 1866, at four o'clock before