ficer twice a day,
and then were put under guard and set to work. The kind of labor I liked
best was unloading the supplies for the prison, which were landed on a
near-by wharf. This roustabout crew had all the unloading to do, and the
reason I liked it was it gave us some chance to steal. Whenever there
was anything extra, intended for the officers, to be unloaded, look out
for accidents. Broken crates were common, and some of the contents was
certain to reach our pockets or stomachs, in spite of the guard.

"I was a willing worker and stood well with the guards. They never
searched me, and when they took us outside the stockade, the captain of
the guard gave me permission, after our work was over, to patronize the
sutler's store and buy knick-knacks from the booths. There was
always some little money amongst soldiers, even in prison, and I was
occasionally furnished money by my messmates to buy bread from a baker's
wagon which was outside the walls. Well, after I had traded a few
times with the baker's boy, I succeeded in corrupting him. Yes, had him
stealing from his employer and selling to me at a discount. I was a good
customer, and being a prisoner, there was no danger of my meeting his
employer. You see the loaves were counted out to him, and he had to
return the equivalent or the bread. At first the bread cost me ten cents
for a small loaf, but when I got my scheme working, it didn't cost me
five cents for the largest loaves the boy could steal from the bakery. I
worked that racket for several months, and if we hadn't been exchanged,
I'd have broke that baker, sure.

"But the most successful scheme I worked was stealing the kidneys out of
beef while we were handling it. It was some distance from the wharf to
the warehouse, and when I'd get a hind quarter of beef on my shoulder,
it was an easy trick to burrow my hand through the tallow and get a
good grip on the kidney. Then when I'd throw the quarter down in the
warehouse, it would be minus a kidney, which secretly found lodgment in
a large pocket in the inside of my shirt. I was satisfied with one or
two kidneys a day when I first worked the trick, but my mess caught on,
and then I had to steal by wholesale to satisfy them. Some days, when
the guards were too watchful, I couldn't get very many, and then again
when things were lax, 'Elijah's Raven' would get a kidney for each man
in our mess. With the regular allowance of rations and what I could
steal, when th