When I bring back in memory the minute impressions of those eventful days, I feel surprise that so many hours of comparative pleasure were found. We had here many persons to converse with. We had light and air, which we had not at Chattanooga. We procured newspapers with frequency, no attempt being made to prevent this as in other prisons, and were able to form some idea of the gigantic contest in which we were so deeply interested, and which at that time progressed hopefully. We had become most intimate with each other, and would not allow despondency or brooding over trouble to take hold upon any one of our number. We also provided employment for each waking hour, and until those tragic events occurred which deepened the gloom around us we were comparatively hopeful and happy. I even managed to take up the thread of my law studies and prosecute them vigorously. I sent word through a visitor to a law firm--Baxter & Temple--that I wanted to borrow "Greenleaf on Evidence," and almost as much to my surprise as pleasure the volumes were promptly sent. The prison made quite a good study, and the spectacle of a man reading law in an iron cage seemed to guards and visitors alike an excellent jest. But I could afford to let them laugh, for mine was the gain, not only in the knowledge acquired, but in causing the prison days to pass less wearily. Before we had been long at Knoxville we were visited by an officer, whom we had seen frequently in Chattanooga, and who told us that he was judge-advocate of a court-martial about to convene, and notified us to prepare for trial. Neither this intelligence nor his manner in giving it was at all alarming. We knew that we had been ordered to Knoxville for this very purpose, and were only anxious to have the trial soon over, that we might be formally declared prisoners of war, and thus be placed in position to be exchanged, if an opportunity should occur. To this end we asked the judge-advocate if we would all be put on trial at once, and when he answered in the negative, we urged the expediency and justice of that course, assuring him that the cases of all were precisely alike. But he refused with some curtness. We next asked that he would select one of our number to be tried, whose award might determine the position of the whole party, and offering to sign a paper agreeing to this course. This he also refused, with the declaration that the court knew its own business, and that every one of us should be tried on his own merits. The only reason I have ever been able to imagine for this course is that the intentions towards us were much more serious than we had been allowed to conjecture, and that it would have looked too absurd to arraign so large a band of private soldiers from one brigade on the charge of being spies. We asked him for the charge on which the trial was to take place, and with some apparent hesitation he gave it,--the same against all. It was charged, in substance, that we were enemies who