Greathouse was released after a brief confinement under a general amnesty act and upon taking the oath of allegiance. Rubery, a foreigner, could not take advantage of the amnesty act. However, at the request of John Bright, President Lincoln granted him a free pardon. But the astute statesman arranged that his precious nephew should not be involved in future trouble because of his Southern proclivities. He was placed on a Pacific Mail steamer and transferred at the Isthmus to a British ship bound for England. We had an affectionate parting, with the hope that we might again meet, a wish that was realized in a dramatic manner. I alone was held, because it had been shown that I had a commission in the Confederate Navy. In almost exactly four months after my sentence, I was brought before Judge Hoffman and ordered released, under the same general amnesty act. The fine was likewise remitted. I am not versed in legal technicalities, but it seemed to me that the learned jurist stretched the strict letter of the law a bit in my behalf. Be that as it may, I always held the name of Hoffman in high esteem. I was free at last, but only to enter into a new kind of bondage. I was broke. The fortune I had won by incredible good luck had vanished absolutely. What was worse, my mine in Mexico was abandoned during the French invasion and my title to it finally lost. It yielded wealth to other owners later on. I never saw my old chum Don Miguel Paredis again, but he kept his money and cut quite a figure in Mexican affairs. When I stepped out of Broadway jail I was outwardly chesty, but inwardly depressed, for I had just eight dollars and fifty cents to my name. Having been a free spender at one of the leading hotels in my capitalistic days, I went to the proprietor and frankly made a clean breast of my impecuniosity. He was overjoyed to receive me as his guest, gave me a fine room and settled all my anxiety as to lodging and three square meals a day. That was nothing out of the common in the old days. But I would like to see the photograph of a man with nerve enough to make such a proposition to the manager of one of our first-class hotels in the present generation. [Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S FATHER A. Harpending Sr., a supporter of the Union] Still my financial affairs gave me no little concern. I thought of writing to my father for temporary assistance, but there was an impediment even there. While I was raising Cain, and wasting my substance for the South in California, my progenitor was one of the strongest Union men in Kentucky. Some rather crisp correspondence had passed between us on that subject. Doubtless he would have been glad enough to assist or welcome the prodigal. But I was too proud to seek his aid.