“I was sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not!” These pathetic words of Our Saviour recurred to my mind, with my recollection of one heroic young woman, who, for no other crime than that of serving her country according to her own conscience, was, for a great length of time, confined in the solitary cell of a Confederate prison. Britomarte, for many weary months, remained a captive in Castle Thunder. The tediousness, the heaviness, the wretchedness of this captivity, who can imagine? She was more than a suspected spy in the hands of the enemy, and as such, she was only saved from the usual fate of a spy by that consideration for her sex which restrained her captors from putting a woman to death for anything less than a capital crime proved upon her—not by circumstantial evidence, but by direct testimony. Yet was her captivity even more bitter and terrible than death. She was debarred from books, newspapers, companionship, and from conversation, even with her guards. She could get no intelligence of her friends or her country. Whether Colonel Rosenthal had recovered, or had died of his wounds, or whether he had been exchanged, or was still a prisoner at Belle Isle, she could not surmise. Whether General Grant had crossed the James and invested Richmond, or whether the Army of the Potomac had again been beaten back to Washington, she did not know. Occasionally, from the shouts that filled the city sheets by day, and the lights that illumined the city windows by night, she conjectured that a Confederate victory had been gained, or a false report of such a victory spread. These were her only sources of even conjecture. In solitude, in silence, in idleness, in close confinement, intense anxiety and maddening suspense, the heavy days and nights, the horrible autumn and winter of her captivity crept slowly into the past. For months her brave soul bore nobly up. But as the spring opened, bringing life and light and beauty to all the earth, but no ray of joy, or hope, or comfort, into her prison cell, her body, soul and spirit all broke down. These were the darkest hours of her long dreary night of misery, but like such hours, they fell just before the dawn of her new, sweet day of joy. It was the ever memorable second of April, eighteen hundred and sixty-five. Up to this day, the great Confederate capital had continued confident in its own fancied security, and even now it was as utterly unconscious of its fast approaching capture, as was the solitary prisoner in Castle Thunder of her quickly coming deliverance. It was Sunday, and the sweet Sabbath peace reigned over the city.