We all agreed to give her the day’s allowance of fish of that week, which we sold to the contractor and received the money, which amounted to nearly one hundred dollars; this sum she received, and returned to her residence on the day of the death of her husband.
On this day, also, the three men who were put into close confinement for marking the traitors on the face, were taken out of the custody of the agent of prisoners of war at this place, by a writ of habeas corpus ad respodendum, and removed to the criminal prison at Exeter, to be tried for the offence by the civil laws of this country. They were removed in irons. The prisoners then made a contribution for the support of these men while at Exeter.
On the tenth, we received London papers, which gave an account of Bonaparte’s having arrived in France at the head of about one thousand men, and that he was making the most rapid advances toward Paris, and thousands joining him; that the greatest confusion was taking place in the affairs of France.
This intelligence struck the greatest astonishment in all England, and created a very serious concern among all the military, who expected to be relieved on the arrival of the treaty ratified by the President, but now they must despair of that idea, as new wars must inevitably follow the steps of that gigantic monster.
On the fourteenth, a universal joy was diffused through the whole prison, and “a smile lighted up in the aspect of woe;” the Favorite, the welcome messenger of peace, arrived, and brought the treaty, ratified by the President of the United States.
I cannot better express the joy that diffused itself through the whole country, Englishmen as well as prisoners, than by giving the following lines from a great author:
“The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe.
No sigh nor murmur the wide world shall hear,
From ev’ry face he wipes off ev’ry tear.”