One of the Raiders—­named Heffron—­had, shortly after his arrest, turned State’s evidence, and given testimony that assisted materially in the conviction of his companions.  One morning, a week or so after the hanging, his body was found lying among the other dead at the South Gate.  The impression made by the fingers of the hand that had strangled him, were still plainly visible about the throat.  There was no doubt as to why he had been killed, or that the Raiders were his murderers, but the actual perpetrators were never discovered.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

July—­the prison becomes more crowded, the weather hotter, nations poorer, and mortality greater—­some of the phenomena of suffering and death.

All during July the prisoners came streaming in by hundreds and thousands from every portion of the long line of battle, stretching from the Eastern bank of the Mississippi to the shores of the Atlantic.  Over one thousand squandered by Sturgis at Guntown came in; two thousand of those captured in the desperate blow dealt by Hood against the Army of the Tennessee on the 22d of the month before Atlanta; hundreds from Hunter’s luckless column in the Shenandoah Valley, thousands from Grant’s lines in front of Petersburg.  In all, seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight were, during the month, turned into that seething mass of corrupting humanity to be polluted and tainted by it, and to assist in turn to make it fouler and deadlier.  Over seventy hecatombs of chosen victims —­of fair youths in the first flush of hopeful manhood, at the threshold of a life of honor to themselves and of usefulness to the community; beardless boys, rich in the priceless affections of homes, fathers, mothers, sisters and sweethearts, with minds thrilling with high aspirations for the bright future, were sent in as the monthly sacrifice to this Minotaur of the Rebellion, who, couched in his foul lair, slew them, not with the merciful delivery of speedy death, as his Cretan prototype did the annual tribute of Athenian youths and maidens, but, gloating over his prey, doomed them to lingering destruction.  He rotted their flesh with the scurvy, racked their minds with intolerable suspense, burned their bodies with the slow fire of famine, and delighted in each separate pang, until they sank beneath the fearful accumulation.  Theseus [Sherman.  D.W.]—­the deliverer—­was coming.  His terrible sword could be seen gleaming as it rose and fell on the banks of the James, and in the mountains beyond Atlanta, where he was hewing his way towards them and the heart of the Southern Confederacy.  But he came too late to save them.  Strike as swiftly and as heavily as he would, he could not strike so hard nor so sure at his foes with saber blow and musket shot, as they could at the hapless youths with the dreadful armament of starvation and disease.