And with what feelings did they now re-enter the fort, and what an aspect did it present! Half-drunken Indians were yet engaged in the work of plunder and destruction, insomuch so that it scarcely appeared to them the same place from which they had sallied out in the morning; and there were moments when the stoutest-hearted wished that they had never returned to it, but perished on the field where their comrades lay, unconscious of the past, regardless of the future of desolation, of which all they saw seemed to give promise. The officers' quarters, and the blockhouses, which had afforded them protection and shelter during many a long year, were now burst open, and every article of heavy bedding and furniture hurled into the square--the latter ripped open, and broken, and the feathers and fragments strewn around as if in mockery of the neatness that had ever been a distinctive characteristic of the well--swept parade ground, where heretofore a pin might have been picked up without a finger being soiled in the act. These were, seemingly, too minute considerations to have weighed at such a moment when higher and more important interests were at stake; but, to the well-regulated eye of the soldier, accustomed to order and decorum, they were now mountains of inequality and discomfort, which contributed as much to the annoyance and mortification of his position as the very fact of captivity itself; and if this was the feeling generally of the men, how deep must have been its effect on the officers, and particularly on Capt. Headley, who had ever been punctilious to a nicety in all that regarded the internal arrangements of Fort Dearborn. But, offensive as this was, how much more so was it to behold many of the band fantastically arrayed, not only in their own clothing, but in that of their wives, desecrating, as it were, the terrible solemnity of the day, and mocking at the severity of suffering to which the latter had been subjected. Of the Indians who had formed their escort, some stopped outside the gate, others mixed with the spectators, and only about a dozen followed them to the mess room, which Winnebeg said he had selected for their temporary quarters, as being the least liable to interruption or molestation. He promised to send them food, and later in the evening, when all was quiet, to conduct the two officers to their wives, who, for greater quiet and security, were still lying concealed in the canoe where he had first placed them.