Another letter, which arrived a week after, contained merely the following paragraph on the subject that interested them most:—­

“We soldiers cannot command our own movements or our time.  I have been able to see G.F. but once, and then our interview was brief.  He seemed very reserved about himself.  He says he came from New York; but his speech is Southern.  He talks about ‘toting’ things, and says he ‘disremembers,’ I shall try to gain his confidence, and perhaps I shall be able to draw him out.”

A fortnight later he wrote:—­

“I have learned from G.F. that the first thing he remembers of himself is living with an old negress, about ten miles from New Orleans, with eight other children, of various shades, but none so white as himself.  He judges he was about nine years old when he was carried to New Orleans, and let out by a rich man named Bruteman to a hotel-keeper, to black boots, do errands, &c.  One of the children that the old negress brought up with him was a mulatto named Henriet.  The boys called her Hen, he said.  He used to ‘tote’ her about when she was a baby, and afterward they used to roll in the mud, and make mud-pies together.  When Hen was twelve years old, she was let out to work in the same hotel where he was.  Soon afterward, Mr. Bruteman put him out to learn the carpenter’s trade, and he soon became expert at it.  But though he earned five or six dollars a week, and finally nine or ten, he never received any portion of it; except that now and then Mr. Bruteman, when he counted his wages, gave him a fip.  I never thought of this side of the question when I used to hear grandfather talk about the rights of slaveholders; but I feel now, if this had been my own case, I should have thought it confounded hard.  He and Hen were very young when they first begun to talk about being married; but he couldn’t bear the thoughts of bringing up a family to be slaves, and they watched for an opportunity to run away.  After several plans which proved abortive, they went boldly on board ‘The King Cotton,’ he as a white gentleman, and she disguised as his boy servant.  You know how that attempt resulted.  He says they were kept two days, with hands and feet tied, on an island that was nothing but rock.  They suffered with cold, though one of the sailors, who seemed kind-hearted, covered them with blankets and overcoats.  He probably did not like the business of guarding slaves; for one night he whispered to G.F., ‘Can’t you swim?’ But George was very little used to the water, and Hen couldn’t swim at all.  Besides, he said, the sailors had loaded guns, and some of them would have fired upon them, if they had heard them plunge; and even if by a miracle they had gained the shore, he thought they would be seized and sent back again, just as they were in Boston.