'Then let my friend in the rear follow
me;' and so we passed, while the sentinel murmured 'All right!' And
right it was, for now we were free, breathing the fresh air, untainted
by the breath of hundreds of famishing, diseased and dying men."

They could not proceed very far without falling in with numbers of the
paroled prisoners. This they did, but their presence excited no
suspicion or comment, as they assumed to belong to the party. They
applied themselves to gathering wood and piling it apparently for
transportation, and gradually crept on and on until they reached a point
beyond the vision of the gray-jackets, when off they started at the top
of their speed; and although before long they were compelled to reduce
their pace, they put several miles behind them in a space of time that
at any other period of their lives, or under any other circumstances,
would have seemed impossible. Pausing to regain breath, they turned, and
_Columbia_ was no longer within sight. This, in itself, was a relief,
for the place was associated in their minds with the intense misery they
had suffered within its boundaries.

Could these men have _foreseen_ the not very distant future, they would
have known that every sigh and groan that cruelty had wrung from them in
that place of torture would be avenged; they would have seen loyal
soldiers swarming in its streets, their old comrades in misery torn from
the grasp of their merciless jailers, and the soulless "Southern
Chivalry" thrust into their place; they would have seen red-handed
vengeance doom that city of blood to destruction, and the glaring
tongues of fire lap up the costly goods and edifices of its vile and
relentless citizens; and those who had no mercy for them in their
wretchedness and famine, now awe-struck on finding that the men they had
so barbarously trampled upon had now the power and the will to retort
upon them with interest; they would have seen brothers in arms, who
until now had been merciful to their enemies when in their power,
suddenly transformed into ravenous wolves, fierce and terrible in their
righteous wrath at the treatment their less fortunate brothers had met
with in this city of blood. The Avenger had come! and not one house but
would fall a smouldering heap of ruins. They would have foreseen this
city ablaze with burning homes for its sins against humanity; its men,
so lately drunk with pride and satiated with cruelty to their
countrymen; its women dives