Miles ventured some on his own account.
"Jeff Davis announced the assassination of Abraham Lincoln the day before it happened. I guess he knew all about it—"
The wife bit her lips and suppressed a sharp answer. Her husband's life was now in this man's hands.
"You are forbidden to buy or read a newspaper," he added curtly, "and your ship will leave this port under sealed orders."
In vain Davis pleaded that his wife and children might be allowed to go to Washington or Richmond where they had acquaintances and friends.
"They will return to Savannah," Miles answered, "by the same ship in which they came and remain in Savannah under military guard."
Jefferson Davis was imprisoned in a casemate of Fortress Monroe, the embrasure of which was closed with a heavy iron grating. The two doors which communicated with the gunner's room were closed with heavy double shutters fastened with crossbars and padlocks. The side openings were sealed with fresh masonry.
Two sentinels with loaded muskets paced the floor without a moment's pause day or night. Two other sentinels and a commissioned officer occupied the gunner's room, the door and window of which were securely fastened. Sentinels were stationed on the parapet overhead whose steady tramp day and night made sleep impossible.
The embrasure opened on the big ditch which surrounds the fort—sixty feet wide and ten feet deep in salt water. Beyond the ditch, on the glacis, was a double line of sentinels and in the casemate rooms on either side of his prison were quartered that part of the guard which was not on post.