We climbed some stone steps, and when I reached the top I found a little old-fashioned brass field-piece confronting me. But there was no rust on its muzzle, which looked at me with the semblance of a threat. "One would think from your preparations, colonel, that we were in a state of war," I said, jestingly. "Have you any weapons on you?" he asked, frowning again, and not answering my jest. "No," I replied; "I had nothing but the rifle, and you have that." "I will keep it for the present," he said, curtly. We paused before a heavy door of oak. While the colonel knocked, I looked up at the overhanging edges of the second floor and saw that they were pierced for sharpshooters. But before I had time to look long, the door was opened by a man in a suit of Confederate gray, like his fellow at the drawbridge. He saluted the colonel in military fashion as the others had done, and we entered a wide hall which seemed to run the entire width of the house. Many of the old houses in Kentucky are built in this fashion. The hall was decorated, I might almost say armed, with weapons,--rifles, pistols, bayonets, swords, many of them of the most modern type. Tanned skins of bear, deer, and wolf were on the floor. Had it not been for the late style of the weapons, I could have maintained the fiction that it was a castle of the Middle Ages and this the baronial hall. He led me up a flight of steps, and opened the door of a small room on the second floor. The room contained nothing but a small table, a camp-bed, a three-legged stool, and two or three other articles of furniture equally plain. There was but a single window, and it was cross-barred heavily with iron. It looked more like a cell than a chamber. Nor did it belie its looks. "This will be your prison for the present," said the colonel. "Lie down on the bed there and rest, and Crothers will be up in ten minutes with food for you." "Prison!" I exclaimed, in surprise. "Yes, prison," he repeated, "but that is all. I do not intend to deal harshly with you otherwise. You are a Yankee, and I must see that you do not meddle." He cut short my protest by leaving the room, slamming the door, and locking it. The door was so thick I could not hear his retreating footsteps. As the colonel had said, I was a prisoner, but I did not feel much alarm. I had confidence in his promise that I would come to no harm. I looked between the bars of the window, which opened upon a small space like a court. One side of the court was open and ran sheer up to the edge of the cliff, which dropped away thirty or forty feet to the river below. The torrent foamed around the mound with a tumult like a mill-race. Beyond were open fields, ending abruptly at the foot of steep and rough mountains. CHAPTER II. ON TRIAL.