"I am not very fond of Yankees, myself," remarked Hunnicutt, the heavy-jawed, broad-necked, coarse-featured lieutenant commanding the prison. "I am as much in favor of hanging them as anybody; but these Vermonters, who haven't been here six months, are a little too violent. They don't own any niggers. 'Tisn't natural. There's something wrong about them. If I were going to hang Yankees at a venture, I think I would begin with them."
An Irish warden brought us, from a Jew outside, three hundred Confederate dollars, in exchange for one hundred in United States currency. For a fifty-dollar Rebel note he procured me a cap of southern manufacture, to replace my hat, which had been snatched from my head by a South Carolina officer, passing upon a railroad train meeting our own. The new cap, of grayish cotton, a marvel of roughness and ugliness, elicited roars of laughter from my comrades.
On the journey thus far, we had gone almost wherever we pleased, unguarded and unaccompanied. But from Atlanta to Richmond we were treated with rigor and very closely watched. A Rebel officer begged of "Junius" his fine pearl-handled pocket knife. Receiving it, he at once conceived an affection for a gold ring upon the prisoner's finger. Even the courtesy of my colleague was not proof against this second impertinence, and he contemptuously declined the request.
Treated with Unusual Rigor.
The captain in charge of us stated that his orders were imperative to keep all newspapers from us; and on no account to permit us to leave the railway carriage. But, finding that we still obtained the daily journals from fellow-passengers, he made a virtue of necessity, and gracefully acquiesced. At last, he even allowed us to take our meals at the station, upon being invited to participate in them at the expense of his prisoners.
[CHAPTER XXXI]
——Give me to drink mandragora,
That I may sleep out this great gap of time.
Antony and Cleopatra.