"Yes, de way you see it is 'case Massa George Ralston order Uncle Tim's head cut off to get de collar."
"I want this collar," I said, "and another heavy iron a woman called a knee-stiffener. This plantation is confiscated, and these irons belong to you as much as to any body. Will you give them to me?"
Each seemed to wait for the others to speak, but the one to whom I had mostly directed my conversation at length replied:
"I reckon you can have 'em; for we's had all we wants ov 'em."
"I thank you; and if you can find any other slave-irons in that pile I wish you would pick them out for me to take home to Michigan, to show what sort of jewelry the colored people had to wear down here."
They turned over the heap, and found iron horns, hand-cuffs, etc., and explained how they were worn. They showed me also where the iron rod upon which was suspended a bell was cut off of Uncle Tim's collar.
Among the group was a crippled man walking with two canes, clad in tattered cotton clothes, that were hanging in frozen strings from his arms like icicles. I selected a whole suit for him, and a soldier's overcoat. He stepped in the rear of a cabin and changed, and came to me weeping.
"I come to show you," he said; "dis is de best dressin' I's ever had in my life. An' I thanks you, an' praise God."
As we were standing on the bank of the river waiting for the return of the ferry on her last trip that day, there were thirty or forty men waiting, who by their favorite gray appeared to be rebel citizens; but our many bristling bayonets kept them in subjection. The ferry soon took us over the river, and we were within our post before the sundown gun was fired.
As I had brought the sick woman and two little children that Captain Howe had sent his ambulance for in the morning, in one wagon, I must go to his hospital with them. This made us so late that the guard said I could not be allowed to enter the camp without a permit from the officer of the night. I told him where I had been all day without a fire; and as he knew the storm had continued until late in the afternoon, and this sick woman whom the captain had sent for could not get through the lines in the morning, I hoped he would read my papers. He held up his lantern to see them; but as soon as he caught sight of my old portfolio he said, "Go on, I know who you are; I've seen that before." I was permitted to leave my sick family in the hospital, and drove the two miles to our head-quarters by eight o'clock. Although very much chilled, I felt relieved, notwithstanding I had witnessed such scenes of suffering and dying during that eventful day.