"Well, boys, where are you going?"
"To Camp Ford," replied Armstrong; "will you be kind enough to show us the way?"
"Certainly; will you ride or walk?" said the officer, pointing to the waiting cart and the grinning driver.
"Thank you, but we'll walk if it is not too far," was the answer, and the two men limped back to the stockade, good-naturedly smiling at the laughter and jokes which greeted them from such of the inmates as had witnessed the escapade.
For some little time past I had been feeling miserable, my limbs swelling as if with dropsy and my appetite being very poor. I had begun to fear that I was likely to die, when Hiram Pratt, one of the members of my company, proposed a course of treatment which he claimed to have seen used with success in similar cases. After deciding to try his remedy, I was helped to the spring, disrobed and had the cold spring water poured slowly on my back for a few minutes. Almost instantly I felt some relief, and, with a daily repetition of the treatment, I soon became myself again. The cure was so complete that for fourteen months I was entirely free from all signs of the trouble.
Among the many schemes devised for escape from our prison were innumerable tunnel devices, and many of these were planned and worked upon, but nearly all the various workings were discovered in one way or another, and but one was a success, although many men escaped at different times in other ways.
The stockade was full of rumors about probable parole, and these stories, evidently prompted and encouraged by our captors to prevent attempts to escape, kept many of us from risking recapture, and possible death, by uncertain attempts to regain our freedom.
The Fourth of July was soon near at hand, and we asked permission to celebrate the day within the stockade. The consent being given, a number of us went out under guard and cut poles and brush, with which we built a large bower in our public square, as well as a grand stand. When finished we had shelter for over 500, and an enthusiastic crowd gathered about the stand on the Fourth. Colonel Leek had prepared an oration, and Colonel Dugan had written an original poem for the occasion. We applauded both oration and poem; when several speeches were made by those among us who were gifted and inclined that way. Long before we had finished one of the men on the outside of the crowd got so excited that he took off his red shirt and raised it on a pole, amid the cheers, hoots and yells of those about him. Our captors promptly marched a squad of soldiers into the stockade and broke up our gathering, giving as a reason that we had flown the American flag. This was not so. We had several flags among us, but were very careful to keep them out of sight.
While we had several flags, we knew that any display on our part of the stars and stripes would cause appropriation, and we possessed our souls with the knowledge that Old Glory was in no danger while kept in hiding.