“Oh, how I struggled! how fearfully I wielded my knife! but it was not that I feared dying—what was life to me then? It was that I feared being foiled in my revenge, and with this fear uppermost in my mind, I hurled my knife about me with giant energy; with the maddened and thoughtless desperation of the panther, when she struggles for her screaming young, did I battle for my revenge; but now they rushed up upon every side—they threw themselves upon me—they bore me again to the earth, but this time senseless, and when I became conscious, I was lying on my back, and bound hands and feet.
“The soldier whom I had shot, died a few moments after receiving his wound; but the officer still survived, although mortally wounded—the ball having broke, in its course, the sternum and ribs, and passed directly through his lungs.
“The soldiers soon gathered around the spot where I lay—their eyes gleaming hate, and their rough features expressing all the atrocity of their nature.
“ ‘Accursed Yankee!’ exclaimed one, ‘would to God you were possessed of nine lives, that we might glut our hatred of you, by depriving you of each by inches,’ and the monster ground his teeth, and kicked me with such force as to nearly deprive me of breath.
“ ‘Depraved and blood-thirsty rebel!’ thundered another, ‘what fiend from hell tempted you to this diabolical act?’
“ ‘The same fiend which tempted you to murder my family,’ I answered.
“Immediately the man’s gaze of hatred began to soften in its expression, and my keen eyes detected a slight emotion dwelling, for an instant, upon his features, as he turned to the first speaker and muttered:
“ ‘I told you not to commit that murderous deed; still you would persist, and now you see how speedily retribution has winged its flight to you. By heaven, this man has served you justly, and ought not to perish for it.’
“ ‘No power save that of heaven can prevent his dying this day,’ muttered the other through his clenched teeth.
“ ‘Beware how you speak to me, sir,’ said the other; the man made an inclination of the head, and walked off.