On arriving at the small-pox hospital I was placed on a bunk in Ward No. 1. I kept in-doors for the space of five or six days, at the end of which time I was classed among the convalescents. On or about December 22d, three convalescents, of whom I was one, accompanied by only one guard, went into the woods on the right bank of Dan River, in quest of persimmons. We went some distance into the country, probably four miles, and secured a quantity of persimmons, which we distributed to the patients in Ward No. 1 on our return to it in the evening. While out on this ramble through the woods, guarded by only one person, I was favorably impressed with the notion of attempting an escape from the Confederates at some future time, when strength would permit. The idea was suggested to my mind by the carelessness of the guard, who more than once set his gun against trees and wandered some distance from it. About Christmas a row of eight wall tents was put up on the hospital grounds, to be used as quarters for convalescents. I was one of eight persons assigned to tent No. 1, and, as I was a non-commissioned officer, the hospital steward placed me in charge of the sixty-four men occupying the eight tents. It is needless to recite here what the duties were that belonged to my position, but I discharged them as faithfully as I could, so as to keep out of the prison-house in Danville as long as possible. Sometime in the month of January, 1864, the nurses in each of the three wards of the hospital escaped from the guards, and started for our lines. This necessitated another detail of nurses for the wards, and the detail was made from among the convalescents. The hospital steward did me the favor to appoint me as ward-master of Ward No. 1, giving me the privilege of selecting those who were to assist me as nurses in the ward. I selected those with whom I had become most intimately acquainted as convalescents. Lucien B. Smith, of Company F, Fourth Michigan Cavalry; William Sutherland, of Company H, Sixteenth United States Infantry; Watson C. Trippe, of Company H, Fifteenth United States Infantry, and John F. Wood, of Company G, Twenty-Sixth Ohio Infantry, were the persons selected. After a short time, Robert G. Taylor, of Company G, Second Massachusetts Cavalry, was added to our force of nurses, to make the burden of labor in the ward a little lighter on us. We attended the patients in Ward No. 1 day after day, and night after night, as well as we could with the scanty supplies of medicine and food furnished by the Confederates, until the night of February 19, 1864. Very many of our fellow-prisoners came under our care while we were acting the part of nurses. Many of them died, and we saw their bodies carted away to the burying-ground and deposited in their last earthly resting places.