Spencer was taken through the rain by the chagrined Captain to the
headquarters, where he caused a little embarrassment. No damning evidence
was discovered on his person, for the pistol had long since ceased to be
a firearm. And so after a stiff lecture from the Colonel he was finally
given back into the custody of his father. Despite the pickets, the young
men filtered through daily,--or rather nightly. Presently some of them
began to come back, gaunt and worn and tattered, among the grim cargoes
that were landed by the thousands and tens of thousands on the levee. And
they took them (oh, the pity of it!) they took them to Mr. Lynch's slave
pen, turned into a Union prison of detention, where their fathers and
grandfathers had been wont to send their disorderly and insubordinate
niggers. They were packed away, as the miserable slaves had been, to
taste something of the bitterness of the negro's lot. So came Bert
Russell to welter in a low room whose walls gave out the stench of years.
How you cooked for them, and schemed for them, and cried for them, you
devoted women of the South! You spent the long hot summer in town, and
every day you went with your baskets to Gratiot Street, where the
infected old house stands, until--until one morning a lady walked out
past the guard, and down the street. She was civilly detained at the
corner, because she wore army boots. After that permits were issued. If
you were a young lady of the proper principles in those days, you climbed
a steep pair of stairs in the heat, and stood in line until it became
your turn to be catechised by an indifferent young officer in blue who
sat behind a table and smoked a horrid cigar. He had little time to be
courteous. He was not to be dazzled by a bright gown or a pretty face; he
was indifferent to a smile which would have won a savage. His duty was to
look down into your heart, and extract therefrom the nefarious scheme you
had made to set free the man you loved ere he could be sent north to
Alton or Columbus. My dear, you wish to rescue him, to disguise him, send