d. By-and-by he gave still greater cause for offense by
his obsequious attempts to curry favor with Captain Wirz, who took him
outside several times for purposes that were not well explained.
Finally, some hours after one of Poll Parrot's visits outside, a Rebel
officer came in with a guard, and, proceeding with suspicious directness
to a tent which was the mouth of a large tunnel that a hundred men or
more had been quietly pushing forward, broke the tunnel in, and took the
occupants of the tent outside for punishment. The question that demanded
immediate solution then was:

"Who is the traitor who has informed the Rebels?"

Suspicion pointed very strongly to "Poll Parrot." By the next morning
the evidence collected seemed to amount to a certainty, and a crowd
caught the Parrot with the intention of lynching him. He succeeded in
breaking away from them and ran under the Dead Line, near where I was
sitting in, my tent. At first it looked as if he had done this to secure
the protection of the guard. The latter--a Twenty-Sixth Alabamian
--ordered him out. Poll Parrot rose up on his one leg, put his back
against the Dead Line, faced the guard, and said in his harsh, cackling
voice:

"No; I won't go out. If I've lost the confidence of my comrades I want
to die."

Part of the crowd were taken back by this move, and felt disposed to
accept it as a demonstration of the Parrot's innocence. The rest thought
it was a piece of bravado, because of his belief that the Rebels would
not injure, him after he had served them. They renewed their yells, the
guard again ordered the Parrot out, but the latter, tearing open his
blouse, cackled out:

"No, I won't go; fire at me, guard. There's my heart shoot me right
there."

There was no help for it. The Rebel leveled his gun and fired. The
charge struck the Parrot's lower jaw, and carried it completely away,
leaving his tongue and the roof of his mouth exposed. As he was carried
back to die, he wagged his tongue rigorously, in attempting to speak, but
it was of no use.

The guard set his gun down and buried his face in his hands. It was the
only time that I saw a sentinel show anything but exultation at killing a
Yankee.

A ludicrous contrast to this took place a few nights later. The rains
had ceased, the weather had become warmer, and our spirits rising with
this increase in the comfort of our surroundings, a number of us were
sitting around "Nosey"--a boy with a