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rats issue, and I think we gave the coup de grace to some of them; but mirabile dictu! it seems as though the whole race of them had since sworn vengeance upon us, such a horrible racket and clatter do they keep up in their infernal nightly revels. Only last night a great big fellow, with immense whiskers (did you know rats wore whiskers?) poked his head out from a hole whilst I sat writing, and when my eye fell upon him then the audacious wretch came boldly out and looked me in the face with a villianous look which had in it the concentration of a thousand murders. - Even now, under the floor, the small fry of them (for they marry and are given in marriage) are beginning to make the night hideous with their sharp and petulant cries. O for some of Costar's "Rat Exterminator." ---- What an awful rebel hole this place is: the atmosphere of it is rank with treason. I wish I were Commandant of it a little while. I would hang every man of them who, having taken "the oath" vented a single treasonable word. Apropos of which, mark me that Abraham Lincoln will in his future