"Colonel," he said, "I shall be compelled to remove you from here. More prisoners are coming, and there is not room for all in this little jug."
"I hope, sir, that you will give me accommodations as good as I have at present," replied Abner.
"I shall be compelled to take you to my own house, every other place being occupied," said the fat, old colonel, with a merry twinkle in his black eyes.
"Surely, if I fare as well as my jailer, I can not complain," said Abner.
He followed Colonel Mortimer from the prison, and stood still for a moment, looking about him in the glorious sunshine, up and down the shaded street, and at the beautiful orange groves in the distance. Never had nature seemed so beautiful to him before. For weeks at a time he had not seen the light of the sun, except through grates, for the rays that had struggled into his dungeon were shorn of their splendor. Now all the beauty of a tropical clime burst on him at once—the fields of cotton, the cloudless sky and the sweet scent of flowers, that continually bloom in this land of endless Summer.
"Oh, beautiful, beautiful!" murmured the prisoner, a moisture gathering in his eyes.
"What is beautiful?" asked the colonel, who was by his side; two soldiers walking in the rear.
"This world, which God has given us," was the reply.
"Yes, it is a beautiful world," said the rebel.
"But we know not how to appreciate it, until we have been for a while deprived of the sight of its beauties," answered Abner.