My father, Harrison Self, is sentenced to hang at four o’clock this evening, on a charge of bridge-burning. As he remains my earthly all and all my hopes of happiness centre in him, I implore you to pardon him. ELIZABETH SELF. With this dispatch the poor girl hurried off to the office two or three hundred yards from the jail; and about two o’clock in the afternoon the answer came to General Carroll telling him not to allow Self to be hung. Self was turned out of the cage into the jail with the rest of us, and looks as if he had gone through a long spell of sickness. But what a thrill of joy ran through the heart of that noble girl! Self is to be confined, as I understand, during the war. This is hard upon an innocent man; but it is preferable to hanging. There follows in the diary an account of an interview--at first refused, and finally granted for twenty minutes--between a small farmer from Sevier County, bearing the name of Madison Cate, and his wife--she with a babe in her arms, and the prisoner too ill with a fever to stand on his feet, but lying on the floor in one corner of the jail with “a bit of old carpeting” for a bed and “some sort of bundle as a pillow.” During the month of December three of the prisoners, having been convicted by court-martial of bridge-burning, were executed by hanging. One of these, C. A. Haun, was a young man, but the head of a small family. He was hanged alone on the eleventh day, and maintained a courageous spirit on the scaffold. The other two, whose name was Harmon, were father and son. They died after the same method six days later, and protested their innocence to the end. Whether for the sake of economy or for some other unknown reason, the military authorities had not provided for the solemn occasion suitable means for ushering more than one of the two souls into eternity at a time. The omission is to be deplored, as it left room for imputing to the managers of the pitiful spectacle a singular want of humanity in compelling the father to witness his son’s ignominious death, while awaiting his own.[25] CHAPTER X. REIGN OF TERROR--A NOTED PATRIOT--HIS PAINFUL EXPERIENCES AND FINAL DELIVERANCE--A REFUGEE’S PERILOUS JOURNEY--CONSCRIPTION--CAPTURE OF FLEEING MEN. “Go, say, I sent thee forth to purchase honor; And not the king exiled thee. Or suppose Devouring pestilence hangs in our air, And thou art flying to a fresher clime. Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it To lie that way thou goest, not whence thou comest.” SHAKSPEARE, _Richard II._