In February my chum—­B.  B. Andrews, now a physician in Astoria, Illinois —­was brought into our building, greatly to my delight and astonishment, and from him I obtained the much desired news as to the fate of my comrades.  He told me they had been sent to Belle Isle, whither he had gone, but succumbing to the rigors of that dreadful place, he had been taken to the hospital, and, upon his convalesence, placed in our prison.

Our men were suffering terribly on the island.  It was low, damp, and swept by the bleak, piercing winds that howled up and down the surface of the James.  The first prisoners placed on the island had been given tents that afforded them some shelter, but these were all occupied when our battalion came in, so that they were compelled to lie on the snow and frozen ground, without shelter, covering of any kind, or fire.  During this time the cold had been so intense that the James had frozen over three times.

The rations had been much worse than ours.  The so-called soup had been diluted to a ridiculous thinness, and meat had wholly disappeared.  So intense became the craving for animal food, that one day when Lieutenant Boisseux—­the Commandant—­strolled into the camp with his beloved white bull-terrier, which was as fat as a Cheshire pig, the latter was decoyed into a tent, a blanket thrown over him, his throat cut within a rod of where his master was standing, and he was then skinned, cut up, cooked, and furnished a savory meal to many hungry men.

When Boisseux learned of the fate of his four-footed friend he was, of course, intensely enraged, but that was all the good it did him.  The only revenge possible was to sentence more prisoners to ride the cruel wooden horse which he used as a means of punishment.

Four of our company were already dead.  Jacob Lowry and John Beach were standing near the gate one day when some one snatched the guard’s blanket from the post where he had hung it, and ran.  The enraged sentry leveled his gun and fired into the crowd.  The balls passed through Lowry’s and Beach’s breasts.  Then Charley Osgood, son of our Lieutenant, a quiet, fair-haired, pleasant-spoken boy, but as brave and earnest as his gallant father, sank under the combination of hunger and cold.  One stinging morning he was found stiff and stark, on the hard ground, his bright, frank blue eyes glazed over in death.

One of the mysteries of our company was a tall, slender, elderly Scotchman, who appeared on the rolls as William Bradford.  What his past life had been, where he had lived, what his profession, whether married or single, no one ever knew.  He came to us while in Camp of Instruction near Springfield, Illinois, and seemed to have left all his past behind him as he crossed the line of sentries around the camp.  He never received any letters, and never wrote any; never asked for a furlough or pass, and never expressed a wish to be elsewhere than in camp.  He was