I have always imagined that the fellow returned home, at the close of the war, and became a prominent member of Tweed’s gang.

We protested against the barbarity of compelling men to wear irons for exercising their natural right of attempting to escape, but no attention was paid to our protest.

Another result of this abortive effort was the establishment of the notorious “Dead Line.”  A few days later a gang of negros came in and drove a line of stakes down at a distance of twenty feet from the stockade.  They nailed upon this a strip of stuff four inches wide, and then an order was issued that if this was crossed, or even touched, the guards would fire upon the offender without warning.

Our surveyor figured up this new contraction of our space, and came to the conclusion that the Dead Line and the Swamp took up about three acres, and we were left now only thirteen acres.  This was not of much consequence then, however, as we still had plenty of room.

The first man was killed the morning after the Dead-Line was put up.  The victim vas a German, wearing the white crescent of the Second Division of the Eleventh Corps, whom we had nicknamed “Sigel.”  Hardship and exposure had crazed him, and brought on a severe attack of St. Vitus’s dance.  As he went hobbling around with a vacuous grin upon his face, he spied an old piece of cloth lying on the ground inside the Dead Line.  He stooped down and reached under for it.  At that instant the guard fired.  The charge of ball-and-buck entered the poor old fellow’s shoulder and tore through his body.  He fell dead, still clutching the dirty rag that had cost him his Life.

CHAPTER XIX.

Capt.  Henri Wirz—­some description of A small-minded personage, who gained great notoriety—­first experience with his disciplinary method.

The emptying of the prisons at Danville and Richmond into Andersonville went on slowly during the month of March.  They came in by train loads of from five hundred to eight hundred, at intervals of two or three days.  By the end of the month there were about five thousand in the stockade.  There was a fair amount of space for this number, and as yet we suffered no inconvenience from our crowding, though most persons would fancy that thirteen acres of ground was a rather limited area for five thousand men to live, move and have their being a upon.  Yet a few weeks later we were to see seven times that many packed into that space.