This opinion the President referred to the Attorney General.  A considerable time elapsed before he found leisure to examine it; but at last it obtained his sanction, also.  Information at length reached us—­the matter having been pending for two months or more—­that the President had signed our pardon.  It had yet, however, to pass through the office of the Secretary for the Interior, and meanwhile we were not by any means free from anxiety.  The reader will perhaps recollect that among the other things which the District Attorney had held over our heads had been the threat to surrender us up to the authorities of Virginia, on a requisition which it was alleged they had made for us.  The story of this requisition had been repeated from time to time, and a circumstance now occurred which, in seeming to threaten us with something of the sort, served to revive all our apprehensions.  Mr. Stuart, the Secretary of the Interior, through whose office the pardon was to pass, sent word to the marshal that such a pardon had been signed, and, at the same time, requested him, if it came that day into his hands, not to act upon it till the next.  As this Stuart was a Virginian, out apprehensions were naturally excited of some movement from that quarter.  The pardon arrived about five o’clock that afternoon; and immediately upon receiving it the marshal told us that he had no longer any hold upon us,—­that we were free men, and at liberty to go where we chose.  As we were preparing to leave the jail, I observed that a gentleman, a friend of the marshal, whom I had often seen there, and who had always treated me with great courtesy, hardly returned my good-day, and looked at me as black as a thunder-cloud.  Afterwards, upon inquiring of the jailer what the reason could be, I learned that this gentleman, who was a good deal of a politician, was greatly alarmed and disturbed lest the act of the President in having pardoned us should result in the defeat of the Whig party—­and, though willing enough that we should be released, he did not like to have it done at the expense of his party, and his own hopes of obtaining some good office.  The Whigs were defeated, sure enough; but whether because we were pardoned—­though the idea is sufficiently nattering to my vanity—­is more than I shall venture to decide.  The black prisoners in the jail, having nothing to hope or fear from the rise or fall of parties, yielded freely to their friendly feelings, and greeted our departure with three cheers.  We left the jail as privately as possible, and proceeded in a carriage to the house of a gentleman of the District, where we were entertained at supper.  Our imprisonment had lasted four years and four months, lacking seven days.  We did not feel safe, however, with that Virginia requisition hanging over our heads, so long as we remained in the District, or anywhere on slave-holding ground; and, by the liberality of our friends, a hack was procured for us, to carry us, that same night, to Baltimore,