For some months it has been known to these men that negotiations were going on between the two Governments for a General Exchange of prisoners, and although there have been to the knowledge of the prisoners many hitches, yet for the last few weeks it has been rumoured that these difficulties were all overcome, and the announcement of the day when the exchange should commence has been hourly expected; but, alas! in place of the expected news, one of the turnkeys has just handed in an authoritative statement that the negotiations have fallen through, and that all hope of freedom must again be banished from their thoughts! To know the agony of despair that must on such a day have seized those 6,000 men, one must have shared their captivity and gone through their experiences. The news from the outside world, the progress of the war, the successes and defeats on either side, the prospects of peace, must have varied the mood of the prisoners from day to day; we can only hope that the national contentment and cheerfulness was for the majority the usual tone. This panorama of life in the prison represents only what that life was in good weather. When the weather was too inclement for the outdoor life commanded by the regulations, and when the prisoners were crowded in the bare and dismal caserns, contentment and high spirits can scarcely have been the dominant tone of the inmates. In the surveyor’s report, {105} referred to in a former chapter, mention is made of the holes cut by the prisoners in the walls of the caserns; on such a day these would be valued not so much for light and ventilation as for the opportunity which they afforded of a glimpse of the world outside—a view of the traffic on the road and of rustic life which would remind many of similar scenes from which the conscription had torn them to fight the battles of Buonaparte. What a tale is told by those holes cut by the prisoners in the outer walls! ’Tis pleasant through the loopholes of retreat To peep at such a world. Poor fellows, the peep they got through the holes they cut was their only share for years of the world outside.