When he picked up his valise he noticed that the key was in the lock, and of course Bowen must have put it there; but whether he had had time to examine the vest and find the precious gold pieces was a question that could not be answered now. “Old Wilkins” would no doubt answer it in about five minutes, was what Marcy said to himself, as he followed his guide down a flight of stairs into a wide hall, which was paved with brick and lined on both sides with dark, narrow cells. Marcy shuddered when he glanced at the pale, hollow-eyed captives on the other side of the grated doors, who crowded up to look at him as he passed along the hall.
“Who are these?” he whispered to his conductor.
“Deserters and the meanest kind of Yankee sympathizers,” was the answer. “Men who give aid and comfort to the enemy while honest soldiers are risking their lives at the front.”
“What’s going to be done with them, do you know?”
“The deserters will be shot, most likely, and every one of the rest ought to be hung. That’s what would be done with them if I had my way.”
Marcy’s heart sank within him. If the corporal could have his way what would be done with him? was the question that came into his mind. He had not only given aid and comfort to the Federals but had served on one of their gunboats; and how did he know but that the commander of the prison would order him into one of those crowded cells after he had taken the descriptive list of his valise, or, in plain English, had robbed it of everything of value? While Marcy was thinking about it the corporal pushed open a door and ushered him into the presence of Captain Wilkins, who sat tilted back in a chair, with his feet on the office table and a cob pipe in his mouth. Although he was resplendent in a brand-new uniform he did not look like a soldier, and Marcy afterward learned that he wasn’t. He was a Home Guard, and would have been a deserter if he had seen the least prospect before him of being ordered to the front.
“Private Gray, sir,” said the corporal, waving his hand in Marcy’s direction.
His interview with Captain Wilkins, of whom he had already learned to stand in fear, was not a long one, but it did much to satisfy Marcy that the man was not as well acquainted with his history as he was afraid he might be. His first words, however, showed that he knew all about the fight that had taken place in Mrs. Gray’s door-yard when the boy was captured.
“So you are the chap who cost the lives of some of my best men, are you?” said he, after he had given Marcy a good looking over. “Do you know what I have a notion to do with you?”
Marcy replied that he did not, being careful to address the captain as “sir,” for he knew it would be folly to irritate such a man as he was. He expected to hear him declare that he would put him into the dungeon and keep him there on bread and water as long as he remained in the jail; but instead of that the captain said: