We spent some time in the camp talking to various acquaintances among the soldier officers whom we met, and as we wandered on we came to a spot where a drum-head court-martial was sitting. They were trying a man who had been accused of being a spy, captured endeavouring to make his way out of the camp at night. He had just been pronounced guilty. He stood with his arms bound and soldiers holding him on either side. He was a fine tall young man with an intelligent countenance, and though dressed in the hunter's garb of a backwoodsman, torn and travel-stained, and covered with dirt, while his appearance was as rough as he could make it, I thought as I looked at him that he was above the rank he had assumed. A few short moments only were allowed him from the time of his condemnation till his execution. His guilt was clear; he did not even attempt to defend himself. The president had just finished addressing him as we came up. "If it is a crime to love one's country better than anything else on earth, to exert every faculty of mind and body, to sacrifice one's time and property, to risk liberty and life to serve her, then I am guilty-- to love liberty and freedom of conscience, to hate tyranny and oppression, then I am indeed a criminal," he answered in an unshaken voice. "You call me a spy and load me with opprobrium. It was necessary to gain information as to the movements of your mercenary army: twice have I obtained that information and carried it to our noble general. My only regret is that I have not succeeded a third time in so doing; but understand that though I have thus laboured to injure you secretly, I have ever fought openly against you on the field of battle, and on that account I might plead to die a soldier's death, and not to be treated as a dog and hung. Yet it matters little. According to your laws my sentence is just. I seek not to appeal from it, and I die with the joyous certainty that the righteous cause for which I suffer will triumph at last, and that your proud legions will retire from this country defeated and disgraced." "Silence, young man?" exclaimed the president; "you departed from your allegiance to your lawful sovereign; you acknowledge that you have taken up arms against his troops, and you are now found acting the despicable part of a spy. Your false reasoning cannot induce me to alter the sentence pronounced against you. You have but a few minutes in which to take your farewell of life." No sooner did Mercer catch sight of the prisoner than he turned very pale, and as he laid his hand on my shoulder I felt that it trembled violently. "What is the matter, Mercer?" I asked.