THE DARKEST HOUR
In the summer of 1864 the President saw the darkest hours of his life.
The change in his appearance was startling and pitiful. His sombre eyes
seemed to have sunk into their caverns beneath the bushy brows and all
but disappeared. Their gaze was more and more detached from earth and
set on some dim, invisible shore. Deeper and deeper sank the furrows in
his ashen face. The shoulders drooped beneath a weight too great for any
human soul to bear.
To Betty Winter's expression of loyalty and sympathy he answered sadly:
"It's success I need, child,--not sympathy. My own burdens of cares are
as nothing to my soul. It's our cause--our cause--the Union must live or
I shall die!"
He sat sometimes by his window for hours immovable as a marble statue,
his deep, hungry eyes gazing, gazing forever over the shining river
toward the Southern hills. His Secretaries stepped softly about the room
in silent sympathy with the Chief they loved with passionate devotion.
Grant had crossed the Rapidan on that glorious spring morning in May
with his magnificent army accompanied by the highest hopes of millions.
And there had followed those awful sickening battles, one after
another, until he had fallen back in failure before the impassable
trenches around Petersburg.
The star of Grant, the conquering hero of the West, had apparently set
in a sea of blood.
Lee, with inferior numbers, alert, resourceful, vigilant, had checked
and baffled him at every turn, and Richmond's fall was no nearer to
human eye than in 1862.
The miles and miles of hospital barracks in Washington, crowded to their
doors with wounded, dying men, were the living witnesses of the Nation's
mortal agony. Every city, town, village, hamlet and county in the North
was in mourning. Death had literally flung its pall over the world.
From these thousands of stricken homes there had slowly risen a storm of
protest against the new leader of the Army. The word "Butcher" was on
every lip. General Grant, they said, possessed merely the qualities of
the bulldog fighter--tenacity and persistence. He held what he had won
so long as men were poured into his ranks by tens of thousands to take
the place of the dead. They declared that he possessed no genius, no
strategic skill, no power to originate plans and devise means to
overcome his skillful and brilliant antagonist. The demand was pressed
on the President for his removal.
His refusal had brought on him the blame for all the blood and all the
suffering and all the failures of the past bitter year.
His answer to his critics was remorseless in its common sense, but added
nothing to his hold on the people.
"We must fight to win," he firmly declared. "Grant is the ablest general
we have yet developed. His losses have been appalling--but the struggle
is now to the bitter end. Our resources are exhaustless. The South can
not replace her fallen soldiers--her losses are fatal, ours are not."
In the face of a political campaign he prepared a call by draft for five
hundred thousand more men and issued a proclamation appointing a day of
Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.
The spirits of the people touched the lowest tide ebb of despair.
The war debt had reached the appalling total of two thousand millions of
dollars and its daily cost was four millions. The paper of the Treasury
was rapidly depreciating and the premium on gold rising until the value
of a one dollar green-back note was less than fifty cents in real money.
The bankers, fearing the total bankruptcy of the Nation, had begun to
refuse further loans on bonds at any rate of interest.
The bounty offered to men for reënlistment in the army when their terms
expired amounted to the unheard of sum of one thousand five hundred
dollars cash on signing for the new term. Bounty jumping had become the
favorite sport of adventurous scoundrels. Millions of dollars were being
stolen by these men without the addition of a musket to the fighting
force. Grant was hanging them daily, but the traitor's work continued.
The enlisted man deserted in three weeks and reappeared at the next post
and reënlisted again, collecting his bounty with each enrollment.
The enemies of the President in his own party, led by Senator Winter, to
make sure of his defeat before the convention, which was about to meet
in Baltimore, held a National convention of Radical Republicans in
Cleveland and nominated John C. Fremont for the Presidency. Their
purpose was by this party division to make Lincoln's nomination an
impossibility. Fremont's withdrawal was the weapon with which they would
fight the President before the regular Republican convention and after.
Senator Winter voiced the feeling of this convention in a speech of
bitter and vindictive eloquence.
"I denounce the administration of Abraham Lincoln," he declared, "as
imbecile and vacillating. We demand not only the crushing of Lee's army,
but a program of vengeance against the rebels, which will mean their
annihilation when conquered. We demand the confiscation of their
property, the overthrow of every trace of local government and the
reduction of their States to conquered provinces under the control of
Congress. The milk and water policy of Lincoln is both a civil and a
military failure, and his renomination would be the greatest calamity
which could befall our Nation!"
A week later the regular party convention met at Baltimore. On the night
before this meeting the President's renomination was not certain.
On every hand his enemies were assailing him with unabated fury. Every
check to the National arms was laid at his door--every mistake of civil
or military management. The ravages of the Confederate cruisers which
were built in England and had swept the seas of our commerce were blamed
on him. He should have called Great Britain to account for these
outrages and had two wars instead of one!
The cost of the great struggle mounting and mounting into billions was
his fault. The draft might have been avoided with the Government in
abler hands. The emancipation policy had not freed a single negro and
driven the whole Democratic Party into opposition to the war. His Border
State policy had held four Slave States in the Union, but crippled the
moral power of his position as anti-Slavery man. Every lie, every
slander of four years were now repeated and magnified.
A competent man must be put into the White House. The Rail-splitter must
go!
The real test of strength would come in the secret meeting of the Grand
Council of the Union League--the Secret Society which had been organized
to defeat the schemes of the Knights of the Golden Circle. In this
meeting men will say exactly what they think. In the big convention
to-morrow all will be harmony and peace. The convention will do what
these powerful leaders from every State in the North tell them to do.
The assembly is dignified and orderly. The men who compose it are the
eyes and ears and brains of the party they represent. They are the real
rulers of the Nation. The party will obey their orders. These are the
men who do the executive thinking for millions. The millions can only
reject or ratify their wills. We are a democracy in theory, but in
reality here is assembled the aristocracy of brains which constitutes
our government.
The Grand President Edmunds raps for order and faces a crowd of keen,
intelligent leaders of men his equal in culture and will.
The meeting is called for but one purpose. With swift, direct action the
battle begins. A friend of the President offers a resolution endorsing
his administration, preceded by a preamble which declares it to be
unwise to swap horses while crossing a stream.
The big guns open on this battle line without a moment's hesitation.
Senator Winter has not thought it wise to make this opening speech. The
prominent part he took in organizing and launching the Fremont
convention has put him in the position of an avowed bolter. He has
already put forward a colleague from the Senate who is supposed to be
friendly to the administration.
The Senator is a man of blunt speech and dominating personality. He
speaks with earnestness, conviction and eloquence. He does not mince
words. All the petty grievances and mistakes and disappointments of his
four years under the tall, quiet man's strong hand are firing his soul
now with burning passion.
He boldly accuses the President of tyranny, usurpation, illegal acts, of
abused power, of misused advantages, of favoritism, stupidity, frauds in
administration, timidity, sluggish inaction, oppression, the willful
neglect of suffering and the willful refusal to hear the cry of the
down-trodden slave.
He turns the battery of his scorn now on his personal peculiarities, his
drawn and haggard and sorrow marked face, his heartlessness in reading
and telling funny stories, and last of all his selfish ambition which
asks a second term at the sacrifice of his party and his country.
A Congressman of unusual brilliance and power follows this assault with
one of even greater eloquence and bitterness.
Two more in quick succession and all demand with one accord the same
thing:
"Down with Lincoln!"
Not a voice has been lifted in his favor. If he has a friend he is
apparently afraid to open his mouth.
And then the giant form of Jim Lane slowly rises. He looks quietly over
the crowd as if passing in review the tragic events of four years. Is he
going to add his voice to this chorus of rage? A year ago in the same
Grand Council he had a bitter grievance against the President and
assailed him furiously. Yesterday he was at the White House and came
away with a shadow on his strong face.
He stood for a long time in silence and seemed to be scanning each
individual in the crowd of tense listeners.
And then his deep voice broke the stillness. His words rang like the
boom of cannon and their penetrating power seemed to pierce the brick
walls of the room.
"Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Grand Council:
"To stir up sore and wounded hearts to bitterness requires no skill or
power of oratory. To address the minds of men sickened by disaster,
wearied by long trial, heated by passion, bewildered by uncertainty,
heavy with grief, and cunningly to turn them into one vindictive
channel, into one blind rush of senseless fury requires no great power
of oratory and no great mastery of the truth. It may be the trick of a
charlatan!"
He paused and gazed with deliberate and offensive insolence into the
faces of the men who had spoken. Their eyes blazed with wrath, and a
fierce thrill of excitement swept the crowd.
"For a man to address himself to an assembly like this, however, goaded
to madness by suffering, sorrow, humiliation, perplexity--and now roused
by venomous arts to an almost unanimous condemnation of the innocent--I
say to address you, turn you in your tracks and force you to go the
other way--that would indeed be a feat of transcendent oratorical power.
I am no orator--but I am going to tell you the truth and the truth will
make you do that thing!"
Men began to lean forward in their seats now as with impassioned faith
he told the story of the matchless work the great lonely spirit had
wrought for his people in the White House during the past passion-torn
years. His last sentence rang like the clarion peal of a trumpet:
"Desert him now and the election of _George B. McClellan_ on a
'Peace-at-any-Price' platform is a certainty--the Union is dissevered,
the Confederacy established, the slaves reshackled, the dead dishonored
and the living disgraced!"
His last sentence was an angry shout whose passion swept the crowd to
its feet. The resolution was passed and Lincoln's nomination became a
mere formality.
But Senator Winter had only begun to fight. His whole life as an
Abolitionist had been spent in opposition to majorities. He had no
constructive power and no constructive imagination. His genius was
purely destructive, but it was genius. Without a moment's delay he began
his plans to force the President to withdraw from his own ticket in the
midst of his campaign.
The one ominous sign which the man in the White House saw with dread was
the rapid growth through these dark days of a "Peace-at-any-Price"
sentiment within his own party lines in the heart of the loyal North.
Again Horace Greeley and his great paper voiced this cry of despair.
The mischief he was doing was incalculable because he persisted in
teaching the millions who read his paper that peace was at any time
possible if Abraham Lincoln would only agree to accept it. As a
Southern-born man, the President knew the workings of the mind of
Jefferson Davis as clearly as he understood his own. Both these men were
born in Kentucky within a few miles of each other on almost the same
day. The President knew that Jefferson Davis would never consider any
settlement of the war except on the basis of the division of the Union
and the recognition of the Confederacy. When Greeley declared that the
Confederate Commissioners were in Canada with offers of peace, the
President sent Greeley himself immediately to meet them and confer on
the basis of a restored Union with compensation for the slaves. The
Conference failed and Greeley returned from Canada angrier with the
President than ever for making a fool of him.
In utter disregard for the facts he continued to demand that the
Government bring the war to an end. The thing which made his attack
deadly was that he was rousing the bitterness of hopeless sorrow in
thousands of homes whose loved ones had fallen.
Thoughtful men and women had begun to ask themselves new questions:
"Is not the price we are paying too great?"
"Can any cause be worth this ocean of tears, this endless deluge of
blood?"
The President must answer this bitter cry with the positive assurance
that he would make peace at any moment on terms consistent with the
Nation's preservation or both he and his party must perish.
He determined to draw from Mr. Davis a positive declaration of the terms
on which the South would accept peace. He dared not do this openly, as
it would be a confession to Europe of defeat and would lead to the
recognition of the Confederacy.
He accordingly sent Colonel Jaquess, a distinguished Methodist clergyman
in the army, and J. R. Gilmore, of the _Tribune_, on a secret mission to
Richmond for this purpose. They must go without credentials or
authority, as private individuals and risk life and liberty in the
undertaking.
Both men promptly accepted the mission and left for Grant's headquarters
to ask General Lee for a pass through his lines.
The Democratic Party was now a militant united force inspired by the
Copperhead leaders, who had determined to defeat the President squarely
on a peace platform and put General McClellan into the White House.
Behind them in serried lines stood the powerful Secret Orders clustered
around the Knights of the Golden Circle.
Positive proofs were finally laid before the President that these
Societies had planned an uprising on the night of the election and the
establishment of a Western Confederacy.
Edmunds, the President of the Union League, handed him the names of the
leaders.
"Now, sir, you can strike!" he urged.
The tall, sorrowful man slowly shook his head.
"You doubt the truth of these statements?" Edmunds asked.
"No. They are too true. Let sleeping dogs lie. One revolution at a time.
We have all we can manage at present. If we win the election they won't
dare rise. If we lose, it's all over anyhow--and it makes no difference
what they do."
With patient wisdom he refused to stir the dangerous hornet's nest.
And to cap the climax of darkness, Jubal Early's army suddenly withdrew
from Lee's lines, swept through the Shenandoah Valley and invaded
Maryland and Pennsylvania.
With three-quarters of a million blue soldiers under arms, the daring
men in grey were once more threatening the Capital. They seized and cut
the Northern railroads, burning their bridges and capturing trains; they
threatened Baltimore, captured Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, burned it,
spread terror throughout the State and surrounding territory, and
brushing past Lew Wallace's six thousand men at Monocacy, were bearing
down on Washington with swift ominous tread.
It was incredible! It was unthinkable, and yet the reveille of Early's
drums could be heard from the White House window.
John Bigelow, our _Chargé d'Affaires_ at Paris, had sent warning of a
conversation with the Emperor of France, at which the President had only
smiled.
"Lee will take Washington," the Emperor had declared, "and then I shall
recognize the Confederacy. I have just received news that Lee is
certain to take the Capital."
The message was flashed to Grant for help. The city was practically at
Early's mercy if he should strike. He couldn't hold the Capital, of
course, but if he took it even for twenty-four hours the Government
would lose all prestige and standing in the Courts of Europe.
For twenty-four hours the panic in Washington was complete. The
Government clerks were rushed into the trenches and hastily armed.
Early threw one shell into the city, which crashed through a house, his
cavalry dashed into the corporate limits and took a prisoner and later
burned the house of Blair, a member of the Cabinet.
The Sixth Corps arrived from Petersburg; a thousand men were killed and
wounded in the skirmishing of two days, but the Capital escaped by the
skin of its teeth.
Grant laconically remarked:
"If Early had been one day earlier he would have entered the Capital."
While he had not actually taken Washington, Lee's strategy was a
masterly stroke. He had cleared the Shenandoah Valley, which was his
granary, and enabled the farmers to reap their crops. He had showed the
world that his army was still so terrible a weapon that with it he could
hold Grant at bay, drive his enemy from the Valley, invade two Northern
States, burn their cities and destroy their railroads, and throw his
shells into Washington.
A wave of incredulous sickening despair swept the North. If this could
be done after three and a half years of blood and tears and two
billions of dollars spent, where could the end be?
Early had done in Washington what neither McDowell, McClellan, Pope,
Burnside, Hooker, Meade nor Grant had yet succeeded in doing for
Richmond--thrown shells into the city and taken a prisoner from its very
streets. Had he arrived a day earlier--in other words, had not Lew
Wallace's gallant little army of six thousand delayed him twenty-four
hours--he could have entered the city, raided the Treasury and burned
the Capitol.
Senator Winter was not slow to strike the blow for which he had been
eagerly waiting a favorable moment. He succeeded in detaching from the
President in this moment of panic a group of men who had stood squarely
for his nomination at Baltimore. He agreed to withdraw Fremont's name if
they would induce the President to withdraw and a new convention be
called.
So deep was the depression, so black the outlook, so certain was
McClellan's election, that the members of the National Republican
Executive Committee met and conferred with this Committee of traitors to
their Chief.
No more cowardly and contemptible proposition was ever submitted to the
chosen leader of a great party. It was not to be wondered at that Winter
and his Radical associates could stoop to it. They were theorists. To
them success was secondary. They would have gladly and joyfully damned
not only the Union--they would have damned the world to save their
theories. But that his own party leaders should come to him in such an
hour and ask him to withdraw cut the great patient heart to the quick.
He agreed to consider their humiliating proposition and give them an
answer in two weeks. Nicolay, his first Secretary, wrote to John Hay,
who was in Illinois:
"DEAR MAJOR: Hell is to pay. The politicians have a stampede on
that is about to swamp everything. The National Committee are here
to-day. Raymond thinks a commission to Richmond is the only salt to
save us. The President sees and says it would be utter ruin. The
matter is now undergoing consultation. Weak-kneed damned fools are
on the move for a new candidate to supplant the President.
Everything is darkness and doubt and discouragement. Our men see
giants in the airy and unsubstantial shadows of the opposition, and
are about to surrender without a blow. Come to Washington on the
first train. Every man who loves the Chief must lay off his coat
now and fight to the last ditch. He's too big and generous to be
trusted alone with these wolves. He is the only man who can save
this Nation, and we must make them see it."
Worn and angry after the long discussion with his cowardly advisers, the
President retired to his bedroom, locked the door, laid down, and tried
to rest. Opposite the lounge on which he lay was a bureau with a
swinging mirror. He gazed for a moment at his long figure, which showed
full length, his eye resting at last on the deep cut lines of the
haggard face. Gradually two separate and distinct images grew--one
behind the other, pale and death-like but distinct. He looked in wonder,
and the longer he looked the clearer stood this pale second reflection.
"That's funny!" he exclaimed.
He rose, rubbed his eyes, and walked to the mirror, examining it
curiously. He had always been a man of visions--this child of the woods
and open fields.
"I wonder if it's an illusion?" he muttered. "I'll try again."
He returned to the couch and lay down. Again it grew a second time
plainer than before, if possible. He watched for a long time with a
feeling of awe.
"I wonder if I'm looking into the face of my own soul?" he mused.
He studied this second image with keen interest. It was five shades
paler than the first. The thing had happened to him once before and his
wife had declared it a sign that he would be elected to a second term,
but the paleness of the second image meant that he would not live
through it. It was uncanny. He rose and paced the floor, laid down
again, and the image vanished. What did it mean?
Only that day a secret service man had come to warn him of a new plot of
assassination and beg him to double the guard.
"What is the use, my dear boy, in setting up the gap when the fence is
down all around?"
"Remember, sir, they shot a hole through your hat one night last week on
your way to the Soldiers' Home."
"Well, what of it? If a man really makes up his mind to kill me he can
do it----"
"You can take precautions."
"But I can't shut myself up in an iron box--now, can I? If I am killed I
can die but once. To live in constant dread of it is to die over and
over again. I decline to die until the time comes--away with your extra
guards! I've got too many now. They bother me."
He threw off his depression and took up a volume of Artemus Ward's funny
sayings to refresh his soul with their quaint humor. He must laugh or
die. He had promised to see Betty Winter with a friend who had a
petition to present at ten o'clock. He would rest until she came.
John Vaughan had insisted on her coming at this unusual hour. She
protested, but he declared the chances of success in asking for his
father's release would be infinitely better if she took advantage of the
President's good nature and saw him alone at night when they would not
be interrupted.
As they neared the White House grounds, crossing the little park on the
north side, Betty's nervousness became unbearable. She stopped and put
her hand on John's arm.
"Let's wait until to-morrow?" she pleaded.
"The President is expecting us----"
"I'll send him word we couldn't come."
"But, why?"
She hesitated and glanced at him uneasily:
"I don't know. I'm just nervous. I don't feel equal to the strain of
such an interview to-night. It means so much to you. It means so much to
me now that love rules my life----"
He took her hands in his and drew her into the friendly shadows beside
the walk.
"Love does rule life, doesn't it?"
"Absolutely. I'm frightened when I realize it," she sighed.
"You are all mine now? In life, in death, through evil report and good
report?"
"In life, in death, through evil report and good report----yours
forever, dearest!"
He took her in his arms and held her in silence. She could feel him
trembling with deep emotion.
"There's nothing to be nervous about then," he said, reassuringly, as
his arms relaxed. "Come, we'll hurry. I want to send a message to my
father to-night announcing his release."
At the entrance to the White House grounds they passed a man who shot a
quick glance at John, and Betty thought his head moved in a nod of
approval or recognition.
"You know him?" she asked nervously.
"One of Baker's men, I think--attempt on the President's life last week.
They've doubled the guard, no doubt."
They passed another, strolling carelessly from the shadows of the white
pillars of the portico.
"They seem to be everywhere to-night," John laughed carelessly.
The White House door was open and they passed into the hall and ascended
the stairs to the Executive Chamber without challenge. Little Tad, the
President's son, who ran the House to suit himself at times, was in his
full dress suit of a lieutenant of the army and had ordered the guard to
attend a minstrel show he was giving in the attic.
The President had agreed to meet Betty in his office at ten o'clock and
told her to bring her friend right upstairs and wait if he were not on
time.
They sat down and waited five minutes in awkward silence. Betty was
watching the strange glittering expression in John Vaughan's eyes with
increasing alarm.
She heard a muffled footfall in the hall, stepped quickly to the door,
and saw the man they had passed at the entrance to the grounds.
She returned trembling.
"The man we passed at the gate is in that hall," she whispered.
"What of it?" was the careless answer. "Baker's secret service men come
and go when they please here----"
He paused and glanced at the door.
"He has his eye on us maybe," he added, with a little laugh.
He studied Betty's flushed face for a moment, curiously hesitated as if
about to speak, changed his mind, and was silent. He drew his watch from
his pocket and looked at it.
"I've ordered a carriage to wait for you at the gate at a quarter past
ten," he said quickly. "I forgot to tell you."
"Why--it may take us longer than half an hour?"
"That's just it. We may be talking two hours. Such things can't be
threshed out in a minute. You can introduce me, say a good word, and
leave us to fight it out----"
"I want to stay," she interrupted.
"Nonsense, dear, it may take hours. Besides, I may have some things to
say to the President, and he some things to say to me that it were
better a sweet girl's ears should not hear----"
"That's exactly what I wish to prevent, John, dear," she pleaded. "You
must be careful and say nothing to offend the President. It means too
much. We must win."
"I'll be wise in the choice of words. But you mustn't stay, dear. I'm
not a child. I don't need a chaperone."
"But you may need a friend----"
"He does wield the power of kings--doesn't he?"
"With the tenderness and love of a father, yes."
"And yet I've wondered," he went on in a curious cold tone, "why he
hasn't been killed--when the death of one man would end this carnival of
murder----"
"John, how can you say such things?" Betty gasped.
"It's true, dear," he answered calmly. "This man's will alone has
prevented peace and prevents it now. The soldiers on both sides joke
with one another across the picket lines. They get together and play
cards at night. Before the battle begins, our boys call out:
"'Get into your holes, now, Johnnie, we've got to shoot.'
"Left to themselves, the soldiers would end this war in thirty minutes.
It's the one man at the top who won't let them. It's hellish--it's
hellish----"
"And you would justify an assassin?" Betty asked breathlessly.
"Who is an assassin, dear?" he demanded tensely. "The man who wields a
knife or the tyrant who calls the fanatic into being? Brutus or Cæsar,
William Tell or Gessler? Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God----"
"John, John--how can you say such things--you don't believe in
murder----"
"No!" he breathed fiercely. "I don't now. I used to until I had a
revelation----"
He stopped short as if strangled.
"Revelation--what do you mean?" Betty whispered, watching his every
movement, with growing terror.
He looked at her with eyes glittering.
"I didn't want to tell you this," he began slowly. "I meant to keep the
black thing hidden in my own soul. But you'll understand better if I
speak. I killed Ned Vaughan with my own hands----"
"You're mad----" Betty shivered.
"I wish I were--no--I was never sane before that flash of red from hell
showed me the truth--showed me what I was doing. We fought in the
darkness of a night attack, hand to hand, like two maddened beasts. He
ran me through with his sword and I sent the last ball left in my
revolver crashing through his breast. In the glare of that shot I saw
his face--the face of my brother! I caught him in my arms as he fell and
held him while the life blood ebbed away through the hole I had torn
near his heart. And then I saw what I'd been doing, saw it all as it
is--war--brother murdering his brother--the shout and the tumult, the
drums and bugles, the daring and heroism of it all, just that and
nothing more--brother cutting his brother's throat----"
His head sank into his hands in a sob that strangled speech.
Betty slipped her arm tenderly around his shoulder and stroked the heavy
black hair.
"But you didn't know, dear--you wouldn't have fired that shot if you
had----"
He lifted himself suddenly and recovered his self-control.
"No. That's just it," he answered bitterly. "I wouldn't have done it had
I known--nor would he, had he known. But I should have seen before that
every torn and mangled body I had counted in the reckoning of the glory
of battle was some other man's brother, some other mother's boy----"
He paused and drew himself suddenly erect:
"Well I'm awake now--I know and see things as they are!"
His hand unconsciously felt for his revolver, and Betty threw her arms
around his neck with a smothered cry of horror:
"Merciful God--John--my darling--you are mad--what are you going to do?"
"Why nothing, dear," he protested, "nothing! I'm simply going to ask the
President whose power is supreme to give my father a fair trial or
release him--that's all--you needn't stay longer--the carriage is
waiting. I can introduce myself and plead my own cause. If he's the
fair, great-hearted man you believe, he'll see that justice is done----"
"You are going to kill the President!" Betty gasped.
"Nonsense--but if I were--what is the death of one man if thousands
live? I saw sixty thousand men in blue fall in thirty days--two thousand
a day--besides those who wore the grey. At Cold Harbor I saw ten
thousand of my brethren fall in twenty minutes. Why should you gasp over
the idea that one man may die whose death would stop this slaughter?"
"John, you're mad!" she cried, clinging to him desperately. "You're mad,
I tell you. You've lost your reason. Come with me, dear--come at
once----"
"No. I was never more sane than now," he answered firmly.
"Then I'll warn the President----"
He held her with cruel force:
"You understand that if it's true, my arrest, court-martial and death
follow?"
"No. I'll warn him not to come. I alone know----"
She broke his grip on her arm and started toward the door. He lifted his
hand in quick commanding gesture:
"Wait! my men are in that hall--it's his life or mine now. You can take
your choice----"
The girl's figure suddenly straightened:
"Take your men out and go with them at once!"
"No. If he does justice, I may spare his life. If he does not----"
"You shall not see him----"
"It's my life or his--I warn you----"
"Then it's yours--I choose my country!"
She walked with quick, firm step to the door leading into the family
apartments of the President. On the threshold her feet faltered. She
grasped the door facing, turned, and saw him standing with folded arms
watching her--with the eyes of a madman. Her face went white. She lifted
her hand to her heart and slowly stumbled back into his arms.
"God have mercy!" she sobbed. "I'm just a woman--my love--my
darling--I--I--can't--kill you----"
Her arms relaxed and she would have fallen to the floor had he not
caught the fainting form and carried her into the hall.
Two men were at his side instantly.
"Take Miss Winter downstairs," he whispered. "There's a carriage at the
gate. Bring it quietly to the door--one of you take her to the Senator's
home. The other must return here immediately and wait my orders. There's
no guard in this outer hall at night. The one inside is with the boy.
Keep out of sight if any one passes."
The men obeyed without a word and John Vaughan stepped quickly back into
the Executive office, drew the short curtains across the window, turned
the lights on full, examined his revolver, and sat down in careless
attitude beside the President's desk. He could hear his heavy step
already approaching the door.