own to perfect nothingness, and a cold sense of misery and
despair came over us. To be thus separated from our friends, also,
seemed like parting the sheep from the goats, and could only be for
the purpose of punishment! No wonder that we looked at each other with
pale, troubled countenances, and asked questions which none were
prepared to solve. But only one moment were we thus crushed beneath
this unexpected blow; the next, we again sought an avenue for hope.

Perhaps they did not recognize us as soldiers, and only wanted to
exchange us as citizens--a matter of indifference to us, provided we
were exchanged at all. We looked around to see what foundation there
might be for this pleasing conjecture.

Our present apartment contained even more prisoners than the one
up-stairs. They were men from all parts of the South. Some of them
had been in prison ever since the war broke out, and a few had been
arrested for supposed anti-slavery principles, even before that event,
and had lived in loathsome dungeons ever since. This would be called
barbarous tyranny if it occurred in Italy; but I have seen men, even
in my own Ohio, who could see no wrong in it when practiced in the
South, on supposed _abolitionists_. There were also some of our own
soldiers here, who had been put in for attempting to escape. This
survey was not calculated to increase our feeble hopes of a speedy
exchange, or even to weaken our fears of further punishment.

In the meantime, breakfast was brought in. It consisted of a small
quantity of thin soup, and a very scanty allowance of bread. To our
delight, the latter was made of flour, instead of corn meal; and all
the time we remained in Richmond, we received good bread, though often
very deficient in quantity.

While we were talking with our new room-mates, an officer again
entered, and inquired for the fifteen men who had last come in. We
answered quickly, for hope was again busy whispering in our hearts,
and suggesting that there had been some mistake, which would now be
rectified, and we taken up stairs again. But there was no such good
fortune in store for us. We were taken out of doors, and there found a
guard waiting to remove us to another prison. Again our hearts sank
within us.

We crossed the street, and halted at a desolate-looking building,
which we afterward learned was "CASTLE THUNDER," the far-famed Bastile
of the South. We were conducted through a guarded door into the
reception-room,