while a
chill crept over me that I thought I should have fainted.

I have already mentioned that sentries were placed at intervals round
the walls to prevent escape,--a precaution which, were one to judge
from the desolate and crippled condition of the inmates, savored of over
care. A few were able to crawl along upon crutches, the majority were
utterly helpless, while the most active were only capable of creeping up
the bank which formed the boundary of the grounds, to look down into the
moat beneath,--a descent of some twenty feet, but which, to imaginations
such as theirs, was a gulf like the crater of a volcano.

Whenever a little group, then, would station themselves on the
"heights," as they were called, and gaze timidly into the depths below,
the guards, far from dispersing them, saw that no better lesson could
be administered than what their own fears suggested, and prudently left
them to the admonitions of their terrors. I remembered this fact, and
resolved to profit by it. If death were to be my lot, it could not come
anywhere with more horrors than here; so that, happen what might,
I resolved to make an effort at escape. The sentry's bullet had few
terrors for one who saw himself surrounded by such objects of suffering
and misery, and who daily expected to be one of their number. Were the
leap to kill me,--a circumstance that in my weak and wounded condition I
judged far from unlikely,--it was only anticipating a few days; and what
days were they!

Such were my calculations, made calmly and with reflection. Not that I
was weary of life; were the world but open to me, I felt I should resume
all my former zest in its sayings and doings,--nay, I even fancied that
the season of privation would give a higher color to my enjoyment of
it; and I know that the teachings of adversity are not the least useful
accessories of him whose wits must point the road to fortune. True
is it, the emergencies of life evoke the faculties and develop the
resources, as the storm and the shipwreck display the hardy mariner. Who
knows, Con, but good luck may creep in even through a punctured wound in
the thorax!

As the day closed, the patients were always recalled by a bell, and
patrol parties of soldiers went round to see if by accident any yet
lingered without the walls. The performance of duty was, however, most
slovenly, since, as I have already said, escape never occurred to those
whose apathy of mind and infirmity of body had