My heart fell within me as I looked up at the gray stone walls and grated windows. The door soon closed behind a hundred of us, not a few being of the less severely wounded. Often in passing I had thought, with a boy’s horror, of this gloomy place, and tried to imagine how I should feel in such a cage. I was to learn full well. With fifteen others, I was shut up in a room about twenty-two feet square, on the Sixth street side and in the second story. I was, but for a Virginia captain, the only wounded man among these, the rest being stout country fellows, ruddy and strong, except one lean little man, a clerk, as I learned later, and of the commissary department. As I had again refused to walk upstairs, I was carried, and not rudely laid down by two soldiers in a corner of the bare room, now to be for many a day our prison. The rest sat down here and there in dull silence, now and then looking at the door as if there hope was to be expected to enter. I called the Virginia captain, after an hour had gone by, and asked him to lift and ease my hurt leg. He was quick to help, and tender. In a few minutes we came to know each other, and thus began a friendly relation which has endured to this present time. For a day or two soldiers were employed as turnkeys, but then a lot of rough fellows took their places, and we began to feel the change. I may say the like of our food. For a week it was better than our pot-luck in camp. We had rye bread, tea without sugar, and horribly tough beef; but within two weeks the ration fell to bread and water, with now and then salt or fresh beef, and potatoes or beans, but neither rum nor tea. A surgeon dressed my wounds for a month, and then I saw him no more. He was a surly fellow, and would do for me nothing else, and was usually half intoxicated. The arm was soon well, but the leg wound got full of maggots when it was no longer cared for, and only when, in January, I pulled out a bit of bone did it heal. Once a day, sometimes in the morning, more often in the afternoon, we were let out in the yard for an hour, watched by sentries, and these also we heard outside under our windows. Observing how quickly the big country louts lost flesh and colour, I set myself to seeing how I could keep my health. I talked with my unlucky fellow-prisoners, ate the food even when it was as vile as it soon became, and when in the yard walked up and down making acquaintances as soon as I was able, while most of the rest sat about moping. I felt sure that before long some one would hear of me and bring relief. None came. The scoundrel in charge was a Captain Cunningham. He had risen from the ranks. A great, florid, burly, drunken brute, not less than sixty years old, This fellow no doubt sold our rations, for in December we once passed three days on rye bread and water, and of the former not much; one day we had no food.