Just at dusk we came to the insignificant village of Florence, the junction of the road leading from Charleston to Cheraw with that running from Wilmington to Kingsville.  It was about one hundred and twenty miles from Charleston, and the same distance from Wilmington.  As our train ran through a cut near the junction a darky stood by the track gazing at us curiously.  When the train had nearly passed him he started to run up the bank.  In the imperfect light the guards mistook him for one of us who had jumped from the train.  They all fired, and the unlucky negro fell, pierced by a score of bullets.

That night we camped in the open field.  When morning came we saw, a few hundred yards from us, a Stockade of rough logs, with guards stationed around it.  It was another prison pen.  They were just bringing the dead out, and two men were tossing the bodies up into the four-horse wagon which hauled them away for burial.  The men were going about their business as coolly as if loading slaughtered hogs.  ’One of them would catch the body by the feet, and the other by the arms.  They would give it a swing—­“One, two, three,” and up it would go into the wagon.  This filled heaping full with corpses, a negro mounted the wheel horse, grasped the lines, and shouted to his animals: 

“Now, walk off on your tails, boys.”

The horses strained, the wagon moved, and its load of what were once gallant, devoted soldiers, was carted off to nameless graves.  This was a part of the daily morning routine.

As we stood looking at the sickeningly familiar architecture of the prison pen, a Seventh Indianian near me said, in tones of wearisome disgust: 

“Well, this Southern Confederacy is the d—–­dest country to stand logs on end on God Almighty’s footstool.”

CHAPTER LXVIII.

First days at Florence—­introduction to lieutenant Barrett, the red-headed keeper—­A brief description of our new quarters—­Winders malign influence manifest.

It did not require a very acute comprehension to understand that the Stockade at which we were gazing was likely to be our abiding place for some indefinite period in the future.

As usual, this discovery was the death-warrant of many whose lives had only been prolonged by the hoping against hope that the movement would terminate inside our lines.  When the portentous palisades showed to a fatal certainty that the word of promise had been broken to their hearts, they gave up the struggle wearily, lay back on the frozen ground, and died.