One day our old jailer, being very drunk, told us that General Mitchel had advanced to Bridgeport, only twenty-eight miles distant, and there defeated the rebels, capturing some of the very same men who had been our guards but a day or two before. How we wished to have been with him! and how we hoped for a further advance on his part! To be captured with Chattanooga would be glorious! The officers of the guard were obviously uneasy. They took the strictest precautions. There were twenty-six men constantly on guard,--surely enough to watch over twenty-two, confined and chained in a dungeon as we were. Mitchel came nearer. We even heard the boom of cannon in the distance, and his advance probably saved our lives, by taking us for the time out of the clutches of Swims and Leadbetter, for a much longer confinement or rather suffocation there must have been fatal. The ladder was thrust down and we were ordered to come out. We would, then, have gladly remained in that vile den a little longer, in the hope of Mitchel's arrival, but we crawled up. Our fastenings were inspected, to see that none of us were in condition to make a sudden dash for liberty; we were formed into a column, with a line of rebel soldiers on each side, and then marched out through the gate towards the cars. Strangely the free air fanned our brows and strangely the wide sky bent above us. Very grateful was the sense of openness and room in the streets through which we passed, even although ironed, with a rebel soldier on either hand. For three whole weeks twenty-two men had been cooped up in a dark room much smaller than an ordinary parlor. No wonder the streets of the hostile town seemed like freedom by comparison. We were soon seated in the cars, and were carried in the evening back southward on the road we had rushed over under such thrilling circumstances three weeks before. How beautiful all nature appeared! It was now May, and the time that we had spent in darkness had not been lost in the outside world. The landscape had been robed in richer verdure, the budding trees had swelled into leafy screens, the sky was of a softer blue, the birds warbled with new melody, and everything seemed to wear its holiday dress. O the joy! the gladness! of being once more under the blue canopy of heaven, and of looking up to its unfathomable depths, with no envious bars to obstruct our view! Many a time have I looked on the most romantic scenery in the freshness of May, but never did I so deeply feel the pleasantness and beauty of the world as on that balmy evening, when the rays of the setting sun, glowing from the west, streamed over the grass and wheat-fields on their path, and poured in mellowed, yellow radiance through the car-windows. But I could not quite forget that I was chained to my companion and surrounded by guards with gleaming bayonets!