CHAPTER XXIII. OF CLARENCE

Captain Clarence Colfax, late of the State Dragoons, awoke on Sunday

morning the chief of the many topics of the conversation of a big city.

His conduct drew forth enthusiastic praise from the gentlemen and ladies

who had thronged Beauregard and Davis avenues, and honest admiration

from the party which had broken up the camp. The boy had behaved well.

There were many doting parents, like Mr. Catherwood, whose boys had

accepted the parole, whose praise was a trifle lukewarm, to be sure.

But popular opinion, when once aroused, will draw a grunt from the most

grudging.

We are not permitted, alas, to go behind these stern walls and discover

how Captain Colfax passed that eventful Sunday of the Exodus. We know

that, in his loneliness, he hoped for a visit from his cousin, and took

to pacing his room in the afternoon, when a smarting sense of injustice

crept upon him. Clarence was young. And how was he to guess, as he

looked out in astonishment upon the frightened flock of white boats

swimming southward, that his mother and his sweetheart were there?

On Monday, while the Colonel and many prominent citizens were busying

themselves about procuring the legal writ which was at once to release

Mr. Colfax, and so cleanse the whole body of Camp Jackson's defenders

from any, veiled intentions toward the Government, many well known

carriages drew up before the Carvel House in Locust Street to

congratulate the widow and the Colonel upon the possession of such a

son and nephew. There were some who slyly congratulated Virginia, whose

martyrdom it was to sit up with people all the day long. For Mrs. Colfax

kept her room, and admitted only a few of her bosom friends to cry with

her. When the last of the callers was gone, Virginia was admitted to her

aunt's presence.

“Aunt Lillian, to-morrow morning Pa and I are going to the Arsenal with

a basket for Max. Pa seems to think there is a chance that he may come

back with us. You will go, of course.”

The lady smiled wearily at the proposal, and raised her hands in

protest, the lace on the sleeves of her dressing gown falling away from

her white arms.

“Go, my dear?” she exclaimed, “when I can't walk to my bureau after that

terrible Sunday. You are crazy, Jinny. No,” she added, with conviction,

“I never again expect to see him alive. Comyn says they may release him,

does he? Is he turning Yankee, too?”

The girl went away, not in anger or impatience, but in sadness. Brought

up to reverence her elders, she had ignored the shallowness of her

aunt's character in happier days. But now Mrs. Colfax's conduct carried

a prophecy with it. Virginia sat down on the landing to ponder on the

years to come,--on the pain they were likely to bring with them from

this source--Clarence gone to the war; her father gone (for she felt

that he would go in the end), Virginia foresaw the lonely days of trial

in company with this vain woman whom accident made her cousin's mother.

Ay, and more, fate had made her the mother of the man she was to marry.

The girl could scarcely bear the thought--through the hurry and swing of

the events of two days she had kept it from her mind.

But now Clarence was to be released. To-morrow he would be coming home

to her joyfully for his reward, and she did not love him. She was bound

to face that again and again. She had cheated herself again and again

with other feelings. She had set up intense love of country in the

shrine where it did not belong, and it had answered--for a while. She

saw Clarence in a hero's light--until a fatal intimate knowledge made

her shudder and draw back. And yet her resolution should not be water.

She would carry it through.

Captain Lige's cheery voice roused her from below--and her father's

laugh. And as she went down to them she thanked God that this friend had

been spared to him. Never had the Captain's river yarns been better told

than at the table that evening. Virginia did not see him glance at the

Colonel when at last he had brought a smile to her face.

“I'm going to leave Jinny with you, Lige,” said Mr. Carvel, presently.

“Worington has some notion that the Marshal may go to the Arsenal

to-night with the writ. I mustn't neglect the boy.”

Virginia stood in front of him. “Won't you let me go?” she pleaded

The Colonel was taken aback. He stood looking down at her, stroking his

goatee, and marvelling at the ways of woman.

“The horses have been out all day, Jinny,” he said, “I am going in the

cars.”

“I can go in the cars, too.”

The Colonel looked at Captain Lige.

“There is only a chance that we shall see Clarence,” he went on,

uneasily.

“It is better than sitting still,” cried Virginia, as she ran away to

get the bonnet with the red strings.

“Lige,--” said the Colonel, as the two stood awaiting her in the hall,

“I can't make her out. Can you?”

The Captain did not answer.

It was a long journey, in a bumping car with had springs that rattled

unceasingly, past the string of provost guards. The Colonel sat in the

corner, with his head bent down over his stick At length, cramped and

weary, they got out, and made their way along the Arsenal wall, past the

sentries to the entrance. The sergeant brought his rifle to a “port”.

“Commandant's orders, sir. No one admitted,” he said.

“Is Captain Colfax here?” asked Mr. Carver

“Captain Colfax was taken to Illinois in a skiff, quarter of an hour

since.”

Captain Lige gave vent to a long, low whistle.

“A skiff!” he exclaimed, “and the river this high! A skiff!”

Virginia clasped his arm in terror. “Is there danger?”

Before he could answer came the noise of steps from the direction of

the river, and a number of people hurried up excitedly. Colonel Carvel

recognized Mr. Worington, the lawyer, and caught him by the sleeve.

“Anything happened?” he demanded.

Worington glanced at the sentry, and pulled the Colonel past the

entrance and into the street. Virginia and Captain Lige followed.

“They have started across with him in a light skiff----four men and a

captain. The young fool! We had him rescued.”

“Rescued!”

“Yes. There were but five in the guard. And a lot of us, who suspected

what they were up to, were standing around. When we saw 'em come down,

we made a rush and had the guard overpowered But Colfax called out to

stand back.”

“Well, sir.”

“Cuss me if I understand him,” said Mr. Worington. “He told us to

disperse, and that he proposed to remain a prisoner and go where they

sent him.”

There was a silence. Then--“Move on please, gentlemen,” said the sentry,

and they started to walk toward the car line, the lawyer and the Colonel

together. Virginia put her hand through the Captain's arm. In the

darkness he laid his big one over it.

“Don't you be frightened, Jinny, at what I said, I reckon they'll fetch

up in Illinois all right, if I know Lyon. There, there,” said Captain

Lige, soothingly. Virginia was crying softly. She had endured more in

the past few days than often falls to the lot of one-and-twenty.

“There, there, Jinny.” He felt like crying himself. He thought of the

many, many times he had taken her on his knee and kissed her tears. He

might do that no more, now. There was the young Captain, a prisoner on

the great black river, who had a better right, Elijah Brent wondered, as

they waited in the silent street for the lonely car, if Clarence loved

her as well as he.

It was vary late when they reached home, and Virginia went silently up

to her room. Colonel Carvel stared grimly after her, then glanced at his

friend as he turned down the lights. The eyes of the two met, as of old,

in true understanding.

The sun was still slanting over the tops of the houses the next morning

when Virginia, a ghostly figure, crept down the stairs and withdrew

the lock and bolt on the front door. The street was still, save for

the twittering of birds and the distant rumble of a cart in its early

rounds. The chill air of the morning made her shiver as she scanned the

entry for the newspaper. Dismayed, she turned to the clock in the hall.

Its hands were at quarter past five.

She sat long behind the curtains in her father's little library, the

thoughts whirling in her brain as she watched the growing life of

another day. What would it bring forth? Once she stole softly back to

the entry, self-indulgent and ashamed, to rehearse again the bitter and

the sweet of that scene of the Sunday before. She summoned up the image

of the young man who had stood on these steps in front of the frightened

servants. She seemed to feel again the calm power and earnestness of his

face, to hear again the clear-cut tones of his voice as he advised

her. Then she drew back, frightened, into the sombre library,

conscience-stricken that she should have yielded to this temptation

then, when Clarence--She dared not follow the thought, but she saw the

light skiff at the mercy of the angry river and the dark night.

This had haunted her. If he were spared, she prayed for strength to

consecrate herself to him A book lay on the table, and Virginia took

refuge in it. And her eyes glancing over the pages, rested on this

verse:--

“Thy voice is heard thro' rolling drums,

That beat to battle where he stands;

Thy face across his fancy comes,

And gives the battle to his hands.”

The paper brought no news, nor mentioned the ruse to which Captain Lyon

had resorted to elude the writ by transporting his prisoner to Illinois.

Newspapers were not as alert then as now. Colonel Carvel was off early

to the Arsenal in search of tidings. He would not hear of Virginia's

going with him. Captain Lige, with a surer instinct, went to the river.

What a morning of suspense! Twice Virginia was summoned to her aunt, and

twice she made excuse. It was the Captain who returned first, and she

met him at the door.

“Oh, what have you heard?” she cried.

“He is alive,” said the Captain, tremulously, “alive and well, and

escaped South.”

She took a step toward him, and swayed. The Captain caught her. For a

brief instant he held her in his arms and then he led her to the great

armchair that was the Colonel's.

“Lige,” she said, “--are you sure that this is not--a kindness?”

“No, Jinny,” he answered quickly, “but things were mighty close. I

was afraid last night. The river was roarin'. They struck out straight

across, but they drifted and drifted like log-wood. And then she began

to fill, and all five of 'em to bail. Then---then she went down. The

five soldiers came up on that bit of an island below the Arsenal. They

hunted all night, but they didn't find Clarence. And they got taken off

to the Arsenal this morning.”

“And how do you know?” she faltered.

“I knew that much this morning,” he continued, “and so did your pa. But

the Andrew Jackson is just in from Memphis, and the Captain tells me

that he spoke the Memphis packet off Cape Girardeau, and that Clarence

was aboard. She picked him up by a miracle, after he had just missed a

round trip through her wheel-house.”

BOOK III.

Volume 6.

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCING A CAPITALIST

A cordon of blue regiments surrounded the city at first from Carondelet

to North St. Louis, like an open fan. The crowds liked best to go to

Compton Heights, where the tents of the German citizen-soldiers were

spread out like so many slices of white cake on the green beside the

city's reservoir. Thence the eye stretched across the town, catching the

dome of the Court House and the spire of St. John's. Away to the west,

on the line of the Pacific railroad that led halfway across the state,

was another camp. Then another, and another, on the circle of the fan,

until the river was reached to the northward, far above the bend. Within

was a peace that passed understanding,--the peace of martial law.

Without the city, in the great state beyond, an irate governor had

gathered his forces from the east and from the west. Letters came and

went between Jefferson City and Jefferson Davis, their purport being

that the Governor was to work out his own salvation, for a while

at least. Young men of St. Louis, struck in a night by the fever of

militarism, arose and went to Glencoe. Prying sergeants and commissioned

officers, mostly of hated German extraction, thundered at the door

of Colonel Carvel's house, and other houses, there--for Glencoe was

a border town. They searched the place more than once from garret to

cellar, muttered guttural oaths, and smelled of beer and sauerkraut, The

haughty appearance of Miss Carvel did not awe them--they were blind

to all manly sensations. The Colonel's house, alas, was one of many in

Glencoe written down in red ink in a book at headquarters as a place

toward which the feet of the young men strayed. Good evidence was

handed in time and time again that the young men had come and gone, and

red-faced commanding officers cursed indignant subalterns, and implied

that Beauty had had a hand in it. Councils of war were held over the

advisability of seizing Mr. Carvel's house at Glencoe, but proof was

lacking until one rainy night in June a captain and ten men spurred up

the drive and swung into a big circle around the house. The Captain

took off his cavalry gauntlet and knocked at the door, more gently than

usual. Miss Virginia was home so Jackson said. The Captain was given an

audience more formal than one with the queen of Prussia could have been,

Miss Carvel was infinitely more haughty than her Majesty. Was not the

Captain hired to do a degrading service? Indeed, he thought so as he

followed her about the house and he felt like the lowest of criminals

as he opened a closet door or looked under a bed. He was a beast of the

field, of the mire. How Virginia shrank from him if he had occasion to

pass her! Her gown would have been defiled by his touch. And yet the

Captain did not smell of beer, nor of sauerkraut; nor did he swear in

any language. He did his duty apologetically, but he did it. He pulled

a man (aged seventeen) out from under a great hoop skirt in a little

closet, and the man had a pistol that refused its duty when snapped in

the Captain's face. This was little Spencer Catherwood, just home from a

military academy.

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 him south by way of Colonel

Carvel's house at Glencoe. Then he will be killed. At least, he will

have died for the South.

First politics, and then war, and then more politics, in this our

country. Your masterful politician obtains a regiment, and goes to war,

sword in hand. He fights well, but he is still the politician. It

was not a case merely of fighting for the Union, but first of getting

permission to fight. Camp Jackson taken, and the prisoners exchanged

south, Captain Lyon; who moved like a whirlwind, who loved the Union

beyond his own life, was thrust down again. A mutual agreement was

entered into between the Governor and the old Indian fighter in command

of the Western Department, to respect each other. A trick for the

Rebels. How Lyon chafed, and paced the Arsenal walks while he might have

saved the state. Then two gentlemen went to Washington, and the next

thing that happened was Brigadier General Lyon, Commander of the

Department of the West.

Would General Lyon confer with the Governor of Missouri? Yes, the

General would give the Governor a safe-conduct into St. Louis, but

his Excellency must come to the General. His Excellency came, and the

General deigned to go with the Union leader to the Planters House.

Conference, five hours; result, a safe-conduct for the Governor back.

And this is how General Lyon ended the talk. His words, generously

preserved by a Confederate colonel who accompanied his Excellency,

deserve to be writ in gold on the National Annals.

“Rather than concede to the state of Missouri the right to demand that

my Government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops

into the state whenever it pleases; or move its troops at its own will

into, out of, or through, the state; rather than concede to the state of

Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in

any matter, however unimportant, I would” (rising and pointing in turn

to every one in the room) “see you, and you, and you, and you, and every

man, woman, and child in this state, dead and buried.” Then, turning

to the Governor, he continued, “This means war. In an hour one of my

officers will call for you and conduct you out of my lines.”

And thus, without another word, without an inclination of the head, he

turned upon his heel and strode out of the room, rattling his spurs and

clanking his sabre.

It did mean war. In less than two months that indomitable leader was

lying dead beside Wilson's Creek, among the oaks on Bloody Hill. What he

would have been to this Union, had God spared him, we shall never know.

He saved Missouri, and won respect and love from the brave men who

fought against him.

Those first fierce battles in the state! What prayers rose to heaven,

and curses sank to hell, when the news of them came to the city by

the river! Flags were made by loving fingers, and shirts and bandages.

Trembling young ladies of Union sympathies presented colors to regiments

on the Arsenal Green, or at Jefferson Barracks, or at Camp Benton to the

northwest near the Fair Grounds. And then the regiments marched through

the streets with bands playing that march to which the words of the

Battle Hymn were set, and those bright ensigns snapping at the front;

bright now, and new, and crimson. But soon to be stained a darker red,

and rent into tatters, and finally brought back and talked over and

cried over, and tenderly laid above an inscription in a glass case, to

be revered by generations of Americans to confer What can stir the

soul more than the sight of those old flags, standing in ranks like

the veterans they are, whose duty has been nobly done? The blood of the

color-sergeant is there, black now with age. But where are the tears of

the sad women who stitched the red and the white and the blue together?

The regiments marched through the streets and aboard the boats, and

pushed off before a levee of waving handkerchiefs and nags. Then

heart-breaking suspense. Later--much later, black headlines, and grim

lists three columns long,--three columns of a blanket sheet! “The City

of Alton has arrived with the following Union dead and wounded, and

the following Confederate wounded (prisoners).” Why does the type run

together?

In a never-ceasing procession they steamed up the river; those calm

boats which had been wont to carry the white cargoes of Commerce now

bearing the red cargoes of war. And they bore away to new battlefields

thousands of fresh-faced boys from Wisconsin and Michigan and Minnesota,

gathered at Camp Benton. Some came back with their color gone and their

red cheeks sallow and bearded and sunken. Others came not back at all.

Stephen Brice, with a pain over his heart and a lump in his throat,

walked on the pavement beside his old company, but his look avoided

their faces. He wrung Richter's hand on the landing-stage. Richter was

now a captain. The good German's eyes were filled as he said good-by.

“You will come, too, my friend, when the country needs you,” he said.

“Now” (and he shrugged his shoulders), “now have we many with no cares

to go. I have not even a father--” And he turned to Judge Whipple, who

was standing by, holding out a bony hand.

“God bless you, Carl,” said the Judge And Carl could scarce believe his

ears. He got aboard the boat, her decks already blue with troops, and as

she backed out with her whistle screaming, the last objects he saw were

the gaunt old man and the broad-shouldered young man side by side on the

edge of the landing.

Stephen's chest heaved, and as he walked back to the office with the

Judge, he could not trust himself to speak. Back to the silent office

where the shelves mocked them. The Judge closed the ground-glass door

behind him, and Stephen sat until five o'clock over a book. No, it was

not Whittlesey, but Hardee's “Tactics.” He shut it with a slam, and went

to Verandah Hall to drill recruits on a dusty floor,--narrow-chested

citizens in suspenders, who knew not the first motion in right about

face. For Stephen was an adjutant in the Home Guards--what was left of

them.

One we know of regarded the going of the troops and the coming of the

wounded with an equanimity truly philosophical. When the regiments

passed Carvel & Company on their way riverward to embark, Mr. Hopper did

not often take the trouble to rise from his chair, nor was he ever known

to go to the door to bid them Godspeed. This was all very well, because

they were Union regiments. But Mr. Hopper did not contribute a horse,

nor even a saddle-blanket, to the young men who went away secretly in

the night, without fathers or mothers or sisters to wave at them. Mr.

Hopper had better use for his money.

One scorching afternoon in July Colonel Carvel came into the office,

too hurried to remark the pain in honest Ephum's face as he watched his

master. The sure signs of a harassed man were on the Colonel. Since May

he had neglected his business affairs for others which he deemed public,

and which were so mysterious that even Mr. Hopper could not get wind

of them. These matters had taken the Colonel out of town. But now the

necessity of a pass made that awkward, and he went no farther than

Glencoe, where he spent an occasional Sunday. Today Mr. Hopper rose from

his chair when Mr. Carvel entered,--a most unprecedented action. The

Colonel cleared his throat. Sitting down at his desk, he drummed upon it

uneasily.

“Mr. Hopper!” he said at length.

Eliphalet crossed the room quickly, and something that was very near a

smile was on his face. He sat down close to Mr. Carvel's chair with

a semi-confidential air,--one wholly new, had the Colonel given it a

thought. He did not, but began to finger some printed slips of paper

which had indorsements on their backs. His fine lips were tightly

closed, as if in pain.

“Mr. Hopper,” he said, “these Eastern notes are due this week, are they

not?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Colonel glanced up swiftly.

“There is no use mincing matters, Hopper. You know as well as I that

there is no money to pay them,” said he, with a certain pompous attempt

at severity which characterized his kind nature. “You have served me

well. You have brought this business up to a modern footing, and made

it as prosperous as any in the town. I am sorry, sir, that those

contemptible Yankees should have forced us to the use of arms, and cut

short many promising business careers such as yours, sir. But we have to

face the music. We have to suffer for our principles.

“These notes cannot be met, Mr. Hopper.” And the good gentleman looked

out of the window. He was thinking of a day, before the Mexican War,

when his young wife had sat in the very chair filled by Mr. Hopper now.

“These notes cannot be met,” he repeated, and his voice was near to

breaking.

The flies droning in the hot office made the only sound. Outside the

partition, among the bales, was silence.

“Colonel,” said Mr. Hopper, with a remarkable ease, “I cal'late these

notes can be met.”

The Colonel jumped as if he had heard a shot, and one of the notes fell

to the floor. Eliphalet picked it up tenderly, and held it.

“What do you mean, sir?” Mr. Carvel cried. “There isn't a bank in town

that will lend me money. I--I haven't a friend--a friend I may ask who

can spare it, sir.”

Mr. Hopper lifted up his hand. It was a fat hand. Suavity was come upon

it like a new glove and changed the man. He was no longer cringing. Now

he had poise, such poise as we in these days are accustomed to see in

leather and mahogany offices. The Colonel glared at him uncomfortably.

“I will take up those notes myself, sir.”

“You!” cried the Colonel, incredulously, “You?”

We must do Eliphalet justice. There was not a deal of hypocrisy in his

nature, and now he did not attempt the part of Samaritan. He did not

beam upon the Colonel and remind him of the day on which, homeless and

friendless, he had been frightened into his store by a drove of mules.

No. But his day,--the day toward which he had striven unknown and

unnoticed for so many years--the day when he would laugh at the pride of

those who had ignored and insulted him, was dawning at last. When we

are thoughtless of our words, we do not reckon with that spark in little

bosoms that may burst into flame and burn us. Not that Colonel Carvel

had ever been aught but courteous and kind to all. His station in life

had been his offence to Eliphalet, who strove now to hide an exultation

that made him tremble.

“What do you mean, sir?” demanded the Colonel, again.

“I cal'late that I can gather together enough to meet the notes,

Colonel. Just a little friendly transaction.” Here followed an interval

of sheer astonishment to Mr. Carvel.

“You have this money?” he said at length. Mr. Hopper nodded.

“And you will take my note for the amount?”

“Yes, sir.”

The Colonel pulled his goatee, and sat back in his chair, trying to face

the new light in which he saw his manager. He knew well enough that the

man was not doing this out of charity, or even gratitude. He reviewed

his whole career, from that first morning when he had carried bales to

the shipping room, to his replacement of Mr. Hood, and there was nothing

with which to accuse him. He remembered the warnings of Captain Lige

and Virginia. He could not in honor ask a cent from the Captain now. He

would not ask his sister-in-law, Mrs. Colfax, to let him touch the money

he had so ably invested for her; that little which Virginia's mother had

left the girl was sacred.

Night after night Mr. Carvel had lain awake with the agony of those

Eastern debts. Not to pay was to tarnish the name of a Southern

gentleman. He could not sell the business. His house would bring nothing

in these times. He rose and began to pace the floor, tugging at his

chin. Twice he paused to stare at Mr. Hopper, who sat calmly on, and the

third time stopped abruptly before him.

“See here,” he cried. “Where the devil did you get this money, sir?”

Mr. Hopper did not rise.

“I haven't been extravagant, Colonel, since I've worked for you,”

he said. “It don't cost me much to live. I've been fortunate in

investments.”

The furrows in the Colonel's brow deepened.

“You offer to lend me five times more than I have ever paid you, Mr.

Hopper. Tell me how you have made this money before I accept it.”

Eliphalet had never been able to meet that eye since he had known it. He

did not meet it now. But he went to his desk, and drew a long sheet of

paper from a pigeonhole.

“These be some of my investments,” he answered, with just a tinge of

surliness. “I cal'late they'll stand inspection. I ain't forcing you to

take the money, sir,” he flared up, all at once. “I'd like to save the

business.”

Mr. Carvel was disarmed. He went unsteadily to his desk, and none save

God knew the shock that his pride received that day. To rescue a name

which had stood untarnished since he had brought it into the world, he

drew forth some blank notes, and filled them out. But before he signed

them he spoke:

“You are a business man, Mr. Hopper,” said he, “And as a business man

you must know that these notes will not legally hold. It is martial law.

The courts are abolished, and all transactions here in St. Louis are

invalid.”

Eliphalet was about to speak.

“One moment, sir,” cried the Colonel, standing up and towering to his

full height. “Law or no law, you shall have the money and interest, or

your security, which is this business. I need not tell you, sir, that my

word is sacred, and binding forever upon me and mine.”

“I'm not afraid, Colonel,” answered Mr. Hopper, with a feeble attempt at

geniality. He was, in truth, awed at last.

“You need not be, sir!” said the Colonel, with equal force. “If you

were--this instant you should leave this place.” He sat down, and

continued more calmly: “It will not be long before a Southern Army

marches into St. Louis, and the Yankee Government submits.” He leaned

forward. “Do you reckon we can hold the business together until then,

Mr. Hopper?”

God forbid that we should smile at the Colonel's simple faith. And if

Eliphalet Hopper had done so, his history would have ended here.

“Leave that to me, Colonel,” he said soberly.

Then came the reaction. The good Colonel sighed as he signed, away that

business which had been an honor to the city where it was founded, I

thank heaven that we are not concerned with the details of their talk

that day. Why should we wish to know the rate of interest on those

notes, or the time? It was war-time.

Mr. Hopper filled out his check, and presently departed. It was the

signal for the little force which remained to leave. Outside, in the

store; Ephum paced uneasily, wondering why his master did not come out.

Presently he crept to the door of the office, pushed it open, and beheld

Mr. Carvel with his head bowed, down in his hands.

“Marse Comyn!” he cried, “Marse Comyn!”

The Colonel looked up. His face was haggard.

“Marse Comyn, you know what I done promise young MISS long time ago,

befo'--befo' she done left us?”

“Yes, Ephum.”

He saw the faithful old negro but dimly. Faintly he heard the pleading

voice.

“Marse Comyn, won' you give Ephum a pass down, river, ter fotch Cap'n

Lige?”

“Ephum,” said the Colonel, sadly, “I had a letter from the Captain

yesterday. He is at Cairo. His boat is a Federal transport, and he is in

Yankee pay.”

Ephum took a step forward, appealingly, “But de Cap'n's yo' friend,

Marse Comyn. He ain't never fo'get what you done fo' him, Marse Comyn.

He ain't in de army, suh.”

“And I am the Captain's friend, Ephum,” answered the Colonel, quietly.

“But I will not ask aid from any man employed by the Yankee Government.

No--not from my own brother, who is in a Pennsylvania regiments.”

Ephum shuffled out, and his heart was lead as he closed the store that

night.

Mr. Hopper has boarded a Fifth Street car, which jangles on with many

halts until it comes to Bremen, a German settlement in the north of the

city. At Bremen great droves of mules fill the street, and crowd the

entrances of the sale stables there. Whips are cracking like pistol

shots, Gentlemen with the yellow cavalry stripe of the United States

Army are pushing to and fro among the drivers and the owners, and

fingering the frightened animals. A herd breaks from the confusion

and is driven like a whirlwind down the street, dividing at the Market

House. They are going to board the Government transport--to die on the

battlefields of Kentucky and Missouri.

Mr. Hopper alights from the car with complacency. He stands for a

while on a corner, against the hot building, surveying the busy scene,

unnoticed. Mules! Was it not a prophecy,--that drove which sent him into

Mr. Carvel's store?

Presently a man with a gnawed yellow mustache and a shifty eye walks out

of one of the offices, and perceives our friend.

“Howdy, Mr. Hopper?” says he.

Eliphalet extends a hand to be squeezed and returned. “Got them

vouchers?” he asks. He is less careful of his English here.

“Wal, I jest reckon,” is the answer: The fellow was interrupted by the

appearance of a smart young man in a smart uniform, who wore an air of

genteel importance. He could not have been more than two and twenty, and

his face and manners were those of a clerk. The tan of field service was

lacking on his cheek, and he was black under the eyes.

“Hullo, Ford,” he said, jocularly.

“Howdy, Cap,” retorted the other. “Wal, suh, that last lot was an extry,

fo' sure. As clean a lot as ever I seed. Not a lump on 'em. Gov'ment

ain't cheated much on them there at one-eighty a head, I reckon.”

Mr. Ford said this with such an air of conviction and such a sober face

that the Captain smiled. And at the same time he glanced down nervously

at the new line of buttons on his chest.

“I guess I know a mule from a Newfoundland dog by this time,” said he.

“Wal, I jest reckon,” asserted Mr. Ford, with a loud laugh. “Cap'n

Wentworth, allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Hopper. Mr. Hopper,

Cap'n Wentworth.”

The Captain squeezed Mr. Hoppers hand with fervor. “You interested in

mules, Mr. Hopper?” asked the military man.

“I don't cal'late to be,” said. Mr. Hopper. Let us hope that our worthy

has not been presented as being wholly without a sense of humor. He

grinned as he looked upon this lamb in the uniform of Mars, and added,

“I'm just naturally patriotic, I guess. Cap'n, 'll you have a drink?”

“And a segar,” added Mr. Ford.

“Just one,” says the Captain. “It's d--d tiresome lookin' at mules all

day in the sun.”

Well for Mr. Davitt that his mission work does not extend to Bremen,

that the good man's charity keeps him at the improvised hospital down

town. Mr. Hopper has resigned the superintendency of his Sunday School,

it is true, but he is still a pillar of the church.

The young officer leans against the bar, and listens to stories by

Mr. Ford, which it behooves no church members to hear. He smokes Mr.

Hopper's cigar and drinks his whiskey. And Eliphalet understands that

the good Lord put some fools into the world in order to give the smart

people a chance to practise their talents. Mr. Hopper neither drinks nor

smokes, but he uses the spittoon with more freedom in this atmosphere.

When at length the Captain has marched out, with a conscious but manly

air, Mr. Hopper turns to Ford--“Don't lose no time in presenting them

vouchers at headquarters,” says he. “Money is worth something now. And

there's grumbling about this Department in the Eastern papers, If we

have an investigation, we'll whistle. How much to-day?”

“Three thousand,” says Mr. Ford. He tosses off a pony of Bourbon, but

his face is not a delight to look upon, “Hopper, you'll be a d--d rich

man some day.”

“I cal'late to.”

“I do the dirty work. And because I ain't got no capital, I only get

four per cent.”

“Don't one-twenty a day suit you?”

“You get blasted near a thousand. And you've got horse contracts, and

blanket contracts besides. I know you. What's to prevent my goin' south

when the vouchers is cashed?” he cried. “Ain't it possible?”

“I presume likely,” said Mr. Hopper, quietly. “Then your mother'll have

to move out of her little place.”

CHAPTER II. NEWS FROM CLARENCE

The epithet aristocrat may become odious and fatal on the banks of the

Mississippi as it was on the banks of the Seine. Let no man deceive

himself! These are fearful times. Thousands of our population, by the

sudden stoppage of business, are thrown out of employment. When gaunt

famine intrudes upon their household, it is but natural that they should

inquire the cause. Hunger began the French Revolution.

Virginia did not read this editorial, because it appeared in that

abhorred organ of the Mudsills, the 'Missouri Democrat.' The wheels of

fortune were turning rapidly that first hot summer of the war time. Let

us be thankful that our flesh and blood are incapable of the fury of

the guillotine. But when we think calmly of those days, can we escape

without a little pity for the aristocrats? Do you think that many of

them did not know hunger and want long before that cruel war was over?

How bravely they met the grim spectre which crept so insidiously into

their homes!

“Virginia, child.” said Mrs. Colfax, peevishly, one morning as they

sat at breakfast, “why do you persist it wearing that old gown? It has

gotten on my nerves, my dear. You really must have something new made,

even if there are no men here to dress for.”

“Aunt Lillian, you must not say such things. I do not think that I ever

dressed to please men.”

“Tut, tut; my dear, we all do. I did, even after married your uncle. It

is natural. We must not go shabby in such times as these, or be out of

fashion, Did you know that Prince Napoleon was actually coming here for

a visit this autumn? We must be ready for him. I am having a fitting at

Miss Elder's to-day.”

Virginia was learning patience. She did not reply as she poured out her

aunt's coffee.

“Jinny,” said that lady, “come with me to Elder's, and I will give you

some gowns. If Comyn had been as careful of his own money as of mine,

you could dress decently.”

“I think I do dress decently, Aunt Lillian,” answered the girl. “I do

not need the gowns. Give me the money you intend to pay for them, and I

can use it for a better purpose.”

Mrs. Colfax arranged her lace pettishly.

“I am sick and tired of this superiority, Jinny.” And in the same

breath. “What would you do with it?”

Virginia lowered her voice. “Hodges goes through the lines to-morrow

night. I should send it to Clarence.” “But you have no idea where

Clarence is.”

“Hodges can find him.”

“Pshaw!” exclaimed her aunt, “I would not trust him. How do you know

that he will get through the Dutch pickets to Price's army? Wasn't

Souther captured last week, and that rash letter of Puss Russell's

to Jack Brinsmade published in the Democrat?” She laughed at the

recollection, and Virginia was fain to laugh too. “Puss hasn't been

around much since. I hope that will cure her of saying what she thinks

of people.”

“It won't,” said Virginia.

“I'll save my money until Price drives the Yankees from the state, and

Clarence marches into the city at the head of a regiment,” Mrs. Colfax

went on, “It won't be long now.”

Virginia's eyes flashed.

“Oh, you can't have read the papers. And don't you remember the letter

Maude had from George? They need the bare necessities of life, Aunt

Lillian. And half of Price's men have no arms at all.”

“Jackson,” said Mrs. Colfax, “bring me a newspaper. Is there any news

to-day?”

“No,” answered Virginia, quickly. “All we know is that Lyon has left

Springfield to meet our troops, and that a great battle is coming,

Perhaps--perhaps it is being fought to-day.”

Mrs. Colfax burst into tears, “Oh, Jinny,” she cried, “how can you be so

cruel!”

That very evening a man, tall and lean, but with the shrewd and kindly

eye of a scout, came into the sitting-room with the Colonel and handed

a letter to Mrs. Colfax. In the hall he slipped into Virginia's hand

another, in a “Jefferson Davis” envelope, and she thrust it in her

gown--the girl was on fire as he whispered in her ear that he had seen

Clarence, and that he was well. In two days an answer might be left

at Mr. Russell's house. But she must be careful what she wrote, as the

Yankee scouts were active.

Clarence, indeed, had proven himself a man. Glory and uniform became

him well, but danger and deprivation better. The words he had written,

careless and frank and boyish, made Virginia's heart leap with pride.

Mrs. Colfax's letter began with the adventure below the Arsenal, when

the frail skiff had sunk near the island, He told how he had heard the

captain of his escort sing out to him in the darkness, and how he had

floated down the current instead, until, chilled and weary, he had

contrived to seize the branches of a huge tree floating by. And how by a

miracle the moon had risen. When the great Memphis packet bore down upon

him, he had, been seen from her guards, and rescued and made much of;

and set ashore at the next landing, for fear her captain would get into

trouble. In the morning he had walked into the country, first providing

himself with butternuts and rawhide boots and a bowie-knife. Virginia

would never have recognized her dashing captain of dragoons in this

guise.

The letter was long for Clarence, and written under great difficulties

from date to date. For nearly a month he had tramped over mountains

and across river bottoms, waiting for news of an organized force of

resistance in Missouri. Begging his way from cabin to cabin, and living

on greasy bacon and corn pone, at length he crossed the swift Gasconade

(so named by the French settlers because of its brawling ways) where

the bridge of the Pacific railroad had been blown up by the Governor's

orders. Then he learned that the untiring Lyon had steamed up the

Missouri and had taken possession of Jefferson City without a blow, and

that the ragged rebel force had fought and lost at Booneville. Footsore,

but undaunted, he pushed on to join the army, which he heard was

retreating southward along the western tier of counties of the state.

On the banks of the Osage he fell in with two other young amen in as bad

a plight as himself. They travelled together, until one day some rough

farmers with shotguns leaped out of a bunch of willows on the borders

of a creek and arrested all three for Union spies. And they laughed when

Mr. Clarence tried to explain that he had not long since been the dapper

captain of the State Dragoons.

His Excellency, the Governor of Missouri (so acknowledged by all good

Southerners), likewise laughed when Mr. Colfax and the two others were

brought before him. His Excellency sat in a cabin surrounded by a camp

which had caused the dogs of war to howl for very shame.

“Colfax!” cried the Governor. “A Colfax of St. Louis in butternuts and

rawhide boots?”

“Give me a razor,” demanded Clarence, with indignation, “a razor and a

suit of clothes, and I will prove it.” The Governor laughed once more.

“A razor, young man! A suit of clothes You know not what you ask.”

“Are there any gentlemen from St. Louis here?” George Catherwood was

brought in,--or rather what had once been George. Now he was a big

frontiersman with a huge blond beard, and a bowie, knife stuck into

his trousers in place of a sword. He recognized his young captain of

dragoons the Governor apologized, and Clarence slept that night in the

cabin. The next day he was given a horse, and a bright new rifle which

the Governor's soldiers had taken from the Dutch at Cole Camp on the way

south, And presently they made a junction with three thousand more who

were their images. This was Price's army, but Price had gone ahead into

Kansas to beg the great McCulloch and his Confederates to come to their

aid and save the state.

“Dear mother, I wish that you and Jinny and Uncle Comyn could have

seen this country rabble. How you would have laughed, and cried,

because we are just like them. In the combined army two thousand

have only bowie-knives or clubs. Some have long rifles of Daniel

Boone's time, not fired for thirty years. And the impedimenta are a

sight. Open wagons and conestogas and carryalls and buggies, and

even barouches, weighted down with frying-pans and chairs and

feather beds. But we've got spirit, and we can whip Lyon's Dutchmen

and Yankees just as we are. Spirit is what counts, and the Yankees

haven't got it, I was made to-day a Captain of Cavalry under

Colonel Rives. I ride a great, raw-boned horse like an elephant.

He jolts me until I am sore,--not quite as easy as my thoroughbred,

Jefferson. Tell Jinny to care for him, and have him ready when we

march into St. Louis.”

“COWSKIN PRAIRIE, 9th July.

“We have whipped Sigel on the prairie by Coon Creek and killed--we

don't know how many. Tell Maude that George distinguished himself

in the fight. We cavalry did not get a chance.

“We have at last met McCulloch and his real soldiers. We cheered

until we cried when we saw their ranks of gray, with the gold

buttons and the gold braid and the gold stars. General McCulloch

has taken me on his staff, and promised me a uniform. But how to

clothe and feed and arm our men! We have only a few poor cattle,

and no money. But our men don't complain. We shall whip the

Yankees before we starve.”

For many days Mrs. Colfax did not cease to bewail the hardship which

her dear boy was forced to endure. He, who was used to linen sheets and

eider down, was without rough blanket or shelter; who was used to the

best table in the state, was reduced to husks.

“But, Aunt Lillian,” cried Virginia, “he is fighting for the South. If

he were fed and clothed like the Yankees, we should not be half so proud

of him.”

Why set down for colder gaze the burning words that Clarence wrote to

Virginia. How she pored over that letter, and folded it so that even

the candle-droppings would not be creased and fall away! He was happy,

though wretched because he could not see her. It was the life he had

longed for. At last (and most pathetic!) he was proving his usefulness

in this world. He was no longer the mere idler whom she had chidden.

“Jinny, do you remember saying so many years ago that our ruin would

come of our not being able to work? How I wish you could see us

felling trees to make bullet-moulds, and forging slugs for canister,

and making cartridges at night with our bayonets as candlesticks.

Jinny dear, I know that you will keep up your courage. I can see

you sewing for us, I can hear you praying for us.”

It was, in truth, how Virginia learned to sew. She had always detested

it. Her fingers were pricked and sore weeks after she began. Sad

to relate, her bandages, shirts, and havelocks never reached the

front,--those havelocks, to withstand the heat of the tropic sun, which

were made in thousands by devoted Union women that first summer of the

war, to be ridiculed as nightcaps by the soldiers.

“Why should not our soldiers have them, too?” said Virginia to the

Russell girls. They were never so happy as when sewing on them against

the arrival of the Army of Liberation, which never came.

The long, long days of heat dragged slowly, with little to cheer those

families separated from their dear ones by a great army. Clarence might

die, and a month--perhaps a year--pass without news, unless he were

brought a prisoner to St. Louis. How Virginia envied Maude because the

Union lists of dead and wounded would give her tidings of her brother

Tom, at least! How she coveted the many Union families, whose sons and

brothers were at the front, this privilege!

We were speaking of the French Revolution, when, as Balzac remarked, to

be a spy was to be a patriot. Heads are not so cheap in our Anglo-Saxon

countries; passions not so fierce and uncontrollable. Compare, with a

prominent historian, our Boston Massacre and St. Bartholomew.

They are both massacres. Compare Camp Jackson, or Baltimore, where a

few people were shot, with some Paris street scenes after the Bastille.

Feelings in each instance never ran higher. Our own provost marshal was

hissed in the street, and called “Robespierre,” and yet he did not fear

the assassin's knife. Our own Southern aristocrats were hemmed in in

a Union city (their own city). No women were thrown into prison, it is

true. Yet one was not permitted to shout for Jeff Davis on the street

corner before the provost's guard. Once in a while a detachment of

the Home Guards, commanded by a lieutenant; would march swiftly into a

street and stop before a house, whose occupants would run to the rear,

only to encounter another detachment in the alley.

One day, in great excitement, Eugenie Renault rang the bell of the

Carvel house, and ran past the astounded Jackson up the stairs to

Virginia's room, the door of which she burst open.

“Oh, Jinny!” she cried, “Puss Russell's house is surrounded by Yankees,

and Puss and Emily and all the family are prisoners!”

“Prisoners! What for?” said Virginia, dropping in her excitement her

last year's bonnet, which she was trimming with red, white, and red.

“Because,” said Eugenie, sputtering with indignation “because they waved

at some of our poor fellows who were being taken to the slave pen. They

were being marched past Mr. Russell's house under guard--Puss had a

small--”

“Confederate flag,” put in Virginia, smiling in spite of herself.

“And she waved it between the shutters,” Eugenie continued. “And some

one told, the provost marshal. He has had the house surrounded, and the

family have to stay there.”

“But if the food gives out?”

“Then,” said Miss Renault, in a voice of awe, “then each one of the

family is to have just a common army ration. They are to be treated as

prisoners.”

“Oh, those Yankees are detestable!” exclaimed Virginia. “But they shall

pay for it. As soon as our army is organized and equipped, they shall

pay for it ten times over.” She tried on the bonnet, conspicuous with

its red and white ribbons, before the glass. Then she ran to the closet

and drew forth the white gown with its red trimmings. “Wait for me,

Genie,” she said, “and we'll go down to Puss's house together. It may

cheer her to see us.”

“But not in that dress,” said Eugenie, aghast. “They will arrest you.”

“Oh, how I wish they would!” cried Virginia. And her eyes flashed so

that Eugenie was frightened. “How I wish they would!”

Miss Renault regarded her friend with something of adoration from

beneath her black lashes. It was about five in the afternoon when they

started out together under Virginia's white parasol, Eugenie's slimmer

courage upheld by her friend's bearing. We must remember that

Virginia was young, and that her feelings were akin to those our

great-grandmothers experienced when the British held New York. It was

as if she had been born to wear the red and white of the South. Elderly

gentlemen of Northern persuasion paused in their homeward walk to smile

in admiration,--some sadly, as Mr. Brinsmade. Young gentlemen found an

excuse to retrace their steps a block or two. But Virginia walked on

air, and saw nothing. She was between fierce anger and exaltation. She

did not deign to drop her eyes as low as the citizen sergeant and guard

in front of Puss Russell's house (these men were only human, after all);

she did not so much as glance at the curious people standing on the

corner, who could not resist a murmur of delight. The citizen sergeant

only smiled, and made no move to arrest the young lady in red and white.

Nor did Puss fling open the blinds and wave at her.

“I suppose its because Mr. Russell won't let her,” said Virginia,

disconsolately, “Genie, let's go to headquarters, and show this Yankee

General Fremont that we are not afraid of him.”

Eugenie's breath was taken away by the very boldness of this

proposition.. She looked up timidly into Virginia's face, and

hero-worship got the better of prudence.

The house which General Fremont appropriated for his use when he came

back from Europe to assume command in the West was not a modest one. It

still stands, a large mansion of brick with a stone front, very tall and

very wide, with an elaborate cornice and plate-glass windows, both tall

and broad, and a high basement. Two stately stone porches capped by

elaborate iron railings adorn it in front and on the side. The chimneys

are generous and proportional. In short, the house is of that type built

by many wealthy gentlemen in the middle of the century, which has best

stood the test of time,--the only type which, if repeated to-day, would

not clash with the architectural education which we are receiving. A

spacious yard well above the pavement surrounds it, sustained by a wall

of dressed stones, capped by an iron fence. The whole expressed wealth,

security, solidity, conservatism. Alas, that the coal deposits under

the black mud of our Western states should, at length, have driven

the owners of these houses out of them! They are now blackened, almost

buried in soot; empty, or half-tenanted by boarders, Descendants of the

old families pass them on their way to business or to the theatre with

a sigh. The sons of those who owned them have built westward, and

west-ward again, until now they are six miles from the river.

On that summer evening forty years ago, when Virginia and Eugenie came

in sight of the house, a scene of great animation was before them. Talk

was rife over the commanding general's pomp and circumstance. He had

just returned from Europe, where pomp and circumstance and the military

were wedded. Foreign officers should come to America to teach our

army dress and manners. A dashing Hungarian commanded the general's

body-guard, which honorable corps was even then drawn up in the street

before the house, surrounded at a respectable distance by a crowd

that feared to jest. They felt like it save when they caught the stern

military eye of the Hungarian captain. Virginia gazed at the glittering

uniforms, resplendent in the sun, and at the sleek and well-fed horses,

and scalding tears came as she thought of the half-starved rabble of

Southern patriots on the burning prairies. Just then a sharp command

escaped in broken English from the Hungarian. The people in the yard of

the mansion parted, and the General himself walked proudly out of the

gate to the curb, where his charger was pawing the gutter. As he put

foot to the stirrup, the eye of the great man (once candidate, and again

to be, for President) caught the glint of red and white on the corner.

For an instant he stood transfixed to the spot, with one leg in the air.

Then he took it down again and spoke to a young officer of his staff,

who smiled and began to walk toward them. Little Eugenie's knees

trembled. She seized Virginia's arm, and whispered in agony.

“Oh, Jinny, you are to be arrested, after all. Oh, I wish you hadn't

been so bold!”

“Hush,” said Virginia, as she prepared to slay the young officer with

a look. She felt like flying at his throat, and choking him for the

insolence of that smile. How dare he march undaunted to within six paces

of those eyes? The crowd drew back, But did Miss Carvel retreat? Not a

step. “Oh, I hope he will arrest me,” she said passionately, to Eugenie.

“He will start a conflagration beyond the power of any Yankee to quell.”

But hush! he was speaking. “You are my prisoners”? No, those were not

the words, surely. The lieutenant had taken off his cap. He bowed very

low and said:

“Ladies, the General's compliments, and he begs that this much of the

sidewalk may be kept clear for a few moments.”

What was left for them, after that, save a retreat? But he was not

precipitate. Miss Virginia crossed the street with a dignity and bearing

which drew even the eyes of the body-guard to one side. And there she

stood haughtily until the guard and the General had thundered away. A

crowd of black-coated civilians, and quartermasters and other officers

in uniform, poured out of the basement of the house into the yards. One

civilian, a youngish man a little inclined to stoutness, stopped at the

gate, stared, then thrust some papers in his pocket and hurried down

the side street. Three blocks thence he appeared abreast of Miss Carvel.

More remarkable still, he lifted his hat clear of his head. Virginia

drew back. Mr. Hopper, with his newly acquired equanimity and poise,

startled her.

“May I have the pleasure,” said that gentleman, “of accompanying you

home?”

Eugenie giggled, Virginia was more annoyed than she showed.

“You must not come out of your way,” she said. Then she added. “I am

sure you must go back to the store. It is only six o'clock.”

Had Virginia but known, this occasional tartness in her speech gave

Eliphalet an infinite delight, even while it hurt him. His was a nature

which liked to gloat over a goal on the horizon He cared not a whit for

sweet girls; they cloyed. But a real lady was something to attain. He

had revised his vocabulary for just such an occasion, and thrown out

some of the vernacular.

“Business is not so pressing nowadays, Miss Carvel,” he answered, with a

shade of meaning.

“Then existence must be rather heavy for you,” she said. She made

no attempt to introduce him to Eugenie. “If we should have any more

victories like Bull Run, prosperity will come back with a rush,” said

the son of Massachusetts. “Southern Confederacy, with Missouri one of

its stars an industrial development of the South--fortunes in cotton.”

Virginia turned quickly, “Oh, how dare you?” she cried. “How dare you

speak flippantly of such things?” His suavity was far from overthrown.

“Flippantly Miss Carvel?” said he. “I assure you that I want to see the

South win.” What he did not know was that words seldom convince women.

But he added something which reduced her incredulity for the time. “Do

you cal'late,” said he,--that I could work for your father, and wish

ruin to his country?”

“But you are a Yankee born,” she exclaimed.

“There be a few sane Yankees,” replied Mr. Hopper, dryly. A remark

which made Eugenie laugh outright, and Virginia could not refrain from a

smile.

But much against her will he walked home with her. She was indignant by

the time she reached Locust Street. He had never dared do such a thing

before, What had got into the man? Was it because he had become

a manager, and governed the business during her father's frequent

absences? No matter what Mr. Hopper's politics, he would always be to

her a low-born Yankee, a person wholly unworthy of notice.

At the corner of Olive Street, a young man walking with long strides

almost bumped into them. He paused looked back, and bowed as if

uncertain of an acknowledgment. Virginia barely returned his bow. He had

been very close to her, and she had had time to notice that his coat was

threadbare. When she looked again, he had covered half the block.

Why should she care if Stephen Brice had seen her in company with Mr.

Hopper? Eliphalet, too, had seen Stephen, and this had added zest to his

enjoyment. It was part of the fruits of his reward. He wished in that

short walk that he might meet Mr. Cluyme and Belle, and every man and

woman and child in the city whom he knew. From time to time he glanced

at the severe profile of the aristocrat beside him (he had to look up a

bit, likewise), and that look set him down among the beasts of prey.

For she was his rightful prey, and he meant not to lose one tittle of

enjoyment in the progress of the game. Many and many a night in the bare

little back room at Miss Crane's, Eliphalet had gloated over the very

event which was now come to pass. Not a step of the way but what he had

lived through before.

The future is laid open to such men as he. Since he had first seen the

black cloud of war rolling up from the South, a hundred times had he

rehearsed the scene with Colonel Carvel which had actually taken place

a week before. A hundred times had he prepared his speech and manner for

this first appearance in public with Virginia after he had forced the

right to walk in her company. The words he had prepared--commonplace, to

be sure, but carefully chosen--flowed from his lips in a continual nasal

stream. The girl answered absently, her feminine instinct groping after

a reason for it all. She brightened when she saw her father at the

doors and, saying good by to Eugenie, tripped up the steps, bowing to

Eliphalet coldly.

“Why, bless us, Jinny,” said the Colonel, “you haven't been parading the

town in that costume! You'll have us in Lynch's slave pen by to-morrow

night. My land!” laughed he, patting her under the chin, “there's no

doubt about your sentiments, anyhow.”

“I've been over to Puss Russell's house,” said she, breathless. “They've

closed it up, you know--” (He nodded.) “And then we went--Eugenie and I,

to headquarters, just to see what the Yankees would do.”

The Colonel's smile faded. He looked grave. “You must take care, honey,”

he said, lowering his voice. “They suspect me now of communicating with

the Governor and McCulloch. Jinny, it's all very well to be brave, and

to stand by your colors. But this sort of thing,” said he, stroking the

gown, “this sort of thing doesn't help the South, my dear, and only

sets spies upon us. Ned tells me that there was a man in plain clothes

standing in the alley last night for three hours.”

“Pa,” cried the girl, “I'm so sorry.” Suddenly searching his face with

a swift instinct, she perceived that these months had made it yellow and

lined. “Pa, dear, you must come to Glencoe to-morrow and rest You must

not go off on any more trips.”

The Colonel shook his head sadly.

“It isn't the trips, Jinny There are duties, my dear, pleasant

duties--Jinny--”

“Yes?”

The Colonel's eye had suddenly fallen on Mr. Hopper, who was still

standing at the bottom of the steps. He checked himself abruptly as

Eliphalet pulled off his hat,

“Howdy, Colonel?” he said.

Virginia was motionless, with her back to the intruder, She was frozen

by a presentiment. As she saw her father start down the steps, she

yearned to throw herself in front of him--to warn him of something; she

knew not what. Then she heard the Colonel's voice, courteous and kindly

as ever. And yet it broke a little as he greeted his visitor.

“Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Hopper?”

Virginia started

“I don't know but what I will, thank you, Colonel,” he answered; easily.

“I took the liberty of walking home with your daughter.”

Virginia fairly flew into the house and up the stairs. Gaining her room,

she shut the door and turned the key, as though he might pursue her

there. The man's face had all at once become a terror. She threw herself

on the lounge and buried her face in her hands, and she saw it still

leering at her with a new confidence. Presently she grew calmer; rising,

she put on the plainest of her scanty wardrobe, and went down the

stairs, all in a strange trepidation new to her. She had never been in

fear of a man before. She hearkened over the banisters for his voice,

heard it, and summoned all her courage. How cowardly she had been to

leave her father alone with him.

Eliphalet stayed to tea. It mattered little to him that Mrs. Colfax

ignored him as completely as if his chair had been vacant He glanced at

that lady once, and smiled, for he was tasting the sweets of victory.

It was Virginia who entertained him, and even the Colonel never guessed

what it cost her. Eliphalet himself marvelled at her change of manner,

and gloated over that likewise. Not a turn or a quiver of the victim's

pain is missed by your beast of prey. The Colonel was gravely polite,

but preoccupied. Had he wished it, he could not have been rude to a

guest. He offered Mr. Hopper a cigar with the same air that he would

have given it to a governor.

“Thank'ee, Colonel, I don't smoke,” he said, waving the bog away.

Mrs. Colfax flung herself out of the room.

It was ten o'clock when Eliphalet reached Miss Crane's, and picked his

way up the front steps where the boarders were gathered.

“The war doesn't seem to make any difference in your business, Mr.

Hopper,” his landlady remarked, “where have you been so late?”

“I happened round at Colonel Carvel's this afternoon, and stayed for tea

with 'em,” he answered, striving to speak casually.

Miss Crane lingered in Mrs. Abner Reed's room later than usual that

night.

CHAPTER III. THE SCOURGE OF WAR

“Virginia,” said Mrs. Colfax, the next morning on coming downstairs, “I

am going back to Bellegarde today. I really cannot put up with such a

person as Comyn had here to tea last night.”

“Very well, Aunt Lillian. At what time shall I order the carriage?”

The lady was surprised. It is safe to say that she had never accurately

gauged the force which Virginia's respect for her elders, and affection

for her aunt through Clarence, held in check. Only a moment since Mrs.

Colfax had beheld her niece. Now there had arisen in front of her a tall

person of authority, before whom she deferred instinctively. It was not

what Virginia said, for she would not stoop to tirade. Mrs. Colfax sank

into a chair, seeing only the blurred lines of a newspaper the girl had

thrust into her hand.

“What--what is it?” she gasped. “I cannot read.”

“There has been a battle at Wilson's Creek,” said Virginia, in an

emotionless voice. “General Lyon is killed, for which I suppose we

should be thankful. More than seven hundred of the wounded are on their

way here. They are bringing them one hundred and twenty miles, from

Springfield to Rollo, in rough army wagons, with scarcely anything to

eat or drink.”

“And--Clarence?”

“His name is not there.”

“Thank God!” exclaimed Mrs. Colfax. “Are the Yankees beaten?”

“Yes,” said Virginia, coldly. “At what time shall I order the carriage

to take you to Bellegarde?”

Mrs. Colfax leaned forward and caught the hem of her niece's gown. “Oh,

let me stay,” she cried, “let me stay. Clarence may be with them.”

Virginia looked down at her without pity.

“As you please, Aunt Lillian,” she answered. “You know that you may

always stay here. I only beg of you one thing, that when you have

anything to complain of, you will bring it to me, and not mention it

before Pa. He has enough to worry him.”

“Oh, Jinny,” sobbed the lady, in tears again, “how can you be so cruel

at such a time, when my nerves are all in pieces?”

But she did not lift her voice at dinner, which was very poor indeed for

Colonel Carvel's house. All day long Virginia, assisted by Uncle Ben and

Aunt Easter, toiled in the stifling kitchen, preparing dainties which

she had long denied herself. At evening she went to the station at

Fourteenth Street with her father, and stood amongst the people, pressed

back by the soldiers, until the trains came in. Alas, the heavy basket

which the Colonel carried on his arm was brought home again. The first

hundred to arrive, ten hours in a hot car without food or water, were

laid groaning on the bottom of great furniture vans, and carted to the

new House of Refuge Hospital, two miles to the south of the city.

The next day many good women went there, Rebel and Union alike, to have

their hearts wrung. The new and cheap building standing in the hot sun

reeked with white wash and paint. The miserable men lay on the hard

floor, still in the matted clothes they had worn in battle. Those were

the first days of the war, when the wages of our passions first came to

appal us. Many of the wounds had not been tended since they were dressed

on the field weeks before.

Mrs. Colfax went too, with the Colonel and her niece, although she

declared repeatedly that she could not go through with such an

ordeal. She spoke the truth, for Mr. Carvel had to assist her to the

waiting-room. Then he went back to the improvised wards to find Virginia

busy over a gaunt Arkansan of Price's army, whose pitiful, fever-glazed

eyes were following her every motion. His frontiersman's clothes,

stained with blackened blood, hung limp over his wasted body. At

Virginia's bidding the Colonel ran downstairs for a bucket of fresh

water, and she washed the caked dust from his face and hands. It was Mr.

Brinsmade who got the surgeon to dress the man's wound, and to prescribe

some of the broth from Virginia's basket. For the first time since the

war began something of happiness entered her breast.

It was Mr. Brinsmade who was everywhere that day, answering the

questions of distracted mothers and fathers and sisters who thronged

the place; consulting with the surgeons; helping the few who knew how to

work in placing mattresses under the worst cases; or again he might have

been seen seated on the bare floor with a pad on his knee, taking down

the names of dear ones in distant states,--that he might spend his night

writing to them.

They put a mattress under the Arkansan. Virginia did not leave him until

he had fallen asleep, and a smile of peace was come upon his sunken

face. Dismayed at the fearful sights about her, awed by the groans that

rose on every side, she was choosing her way swiftly down the room to

join her father and aunt in the carriage below.

The panic of flight had seized her. She felt that another little while

in this heated, horrible place would drive her mad. She was almost at

the door when she came suddenly upon a sight that made her pause.

An elderly lady in widow's black was kneeling beside a man groaning in

mortal agony, fanning away the flies already gathering about his face.

He wore the uniform of a Union sergeant,--dusty and splotched and torn.

A small Testament was clasped convulsively in the fingers of his right

band. The left sleeve was empty. Virginia lingered, whelmed in pity,

thrilled by a wonderful womanliness of her who knelt there. Her face the

girl had not even seen, for it was bent over the man. The sweetness of

her voice held Virginia as in a spell, and the sergeant stopped groaning

that he might listen:

“You have a wife?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And a child?”

The answer came so painfully.

“A boy, ma'am--born the week--before I came--away.”

“I shall write to your wife,” said the lady, so gently that Virginia

could scarce hear, “and tell her that you are cared for. Where does she

live?”

He gave the address faintly--some little town in Minnesota. Then he

added, “God bless you, lady.”

Just then the chief surgeon came and stood over them. The lady turned

her face up to him, and tears sparkled in her eyes. Virginia felt them

wet in her own. Her worship was not given to many. Nobility, character,

efficiency,-all were written on that face. Nobility spoke in the large

features, in the generous mouth, in the calm, gray eyes. Virginia had

seen her often before, but not until now was the woman revealed to her.

“Doctor, could this man's life be saved if I took him to my home?”

The surgeon got down beside her and took the man's pulse. The eyes

closed. For a while the doctor knelt there, shaking his head. “He has

fainted,” he said.

“Do you think he can be saved?” asked the lady again. The surgeon

smiled,--such a smile as a good man gives after eighteen hours of

amputating, of bandaging, of advising,--work which requires a firm hand,

a clear eye and brain, and a good heart.

“My dear Mrs. Brice,” he said, “I shall be glad to get you permission

to take him, but we must first make him worth the taking. Another hour

would have been too late.” He glanced hurriedly about the busy room, and

then added, “We must have one more to help us.”

Just then some one touched Virginia's arm. It was her father.

“I am afraid we must go, dear,” he said, “your aunt is getting

impatient.”

“Won't you please go without me, Pa?” she asked. “Perhaps I can be of

some use.”

The Colonel cast a wondering glance at the limp uniform, and went

away. The surgeon, who knew the Carvel family, gave Virginia a look of

astonishment. It was Mrs. Brice's searching gaze that brought the color

to the girl's, face.

“Thank you, my dear,” she said simply.

As soon as he could get his sister-in-law off to Locust Street in the

carriage, Colonel Carvel came back. For two reeking hours he stood

against the newly plastered wall. Even he was surprised at the fortitude

and skill Virginia showed from the very first, when she had deftly

cut away the stiffened blue cloth, and helped to take off the rough

bandages. At length the fearful operation was finished, and the weary

surgeon, gathering up his box, expressed with all the energy left to

him, his thanks to the two ladies.

Virginia stood up, faint and dizzy. The work of her hands had sustained

her while it lasted, but now the ordeal was come. She went down the

stairs on her father's arm, and out into the air. All at once she knew

that Mrs. Brice was beside her, and had taken her by the hand.

“My dear?” she was saying, “God will reward you for this act. You have

taught many of us to-day a lesson we should have learned in our Bibles.”

Virginia trembled with many emotions, but she answered nothing. The

mere presence of this woman had a strange effect upon the girl,--she was

filled with a longing unutterable. It was not because Margaret Brice

was the mother of him whose life had been so strangely blended with

hers--whom she saw in her dreams. And yet now some of Stephen's traits

seemed to come to her understanding, as by a revelation. Virginia had

labored through the heat of the day by Margaret Brice's side doing His

work, which levels all feuds and makes all women sisters. One brief

second had been needful for the spell.

The Colonel bowed with that courtesy and respect which distinguished

him, and Mrs. Brice left them to go back into the room of torment, and

watch by the sergeant's pallet. Virginia's eyes followed her up the

stairs, and then she and her father walked slowly to the carriage. With

her foot on the step Virginia paused.

“Pa,” she said, “do you think it would be possible to get them to let us

take that Arkansan into our house?”

“Why, honey, I'll ask Brinsmade if you like,” said the Colonel. “Here he

comes now, and Anne.”

It was Virginia who put the question to him.

“My dear,” replied that gentleman, patting her, “I would do anything

in the world for you. I'll see General Fremont this very afternoon.

Virginia,” he added, soberly, “it is such acts as yours to-day that give

us courage to live in these times.”

Anne kissed her friend.

“Oh, Jinny, I saw what you were doing for one of our men. What am I

saying?” she cried. “They are your men, too. This horrible war cannot

last. It cannot last. It was well that Virginia did not see the smile on

the face of the commanding general when Mr. Brinsmade at length got to

him with her request. This was before the days when the wounded arrived

by the thousands, when the zeal of the Southern ladies threatened to

throw out of gear the workings of a great system. But the General, had

had his eye on Mr. Carvel from the first. Therefore he smiled.

“Colonel Carvel,” said Mr. Brinsmade, with dignity, “is a gentleman.

When he gives his word, it is sacred, sir.”

“Even to an enemy,” the General put in, “By George, Brinsmade, unless I

knew you, I should think that you were half rebel yourself. Well, well,

he may have his Arkansan.”

Mr. Brinsmade, when he conveyed the news to the Carvel house, did not

say that he had wasted a precious afternoon in the attempt to interview

his Excellency, the Commander in-chief. It was like obtaining an

audience with the Sultan or the Czar. Citizens who had been prominent

in affairs for twenty years, philanthropists and patriotic-spirited men

like Mr. Brinsmade, the mayor, and all the ex-mayors mopped their brows

in one of the general's anterooms of the big mansion, and wrangled with

beardless youths in bright uniforms who were part of the chain. The

General might have been a Richelieu, a Marlborough. His European notions

of uniformed inaccessibility he carried out to the letter. He was

a royal personage, seldom seen, who went abroad in the midst of a

glittering guard. It did not seem to weigh with his Excellency that

these simple and democratic gentlemen would not put up with this sort of

thing. That they who had saved the city to the Union were more or less

in communication with a simple and democratic President; that in all

their lives they had never been in the habit of sitting idly for two

hours to mop their brows.

On the other hand, once you got beyond the gold lace and the etiquette,

you discovered a good man and a patriot. It was far from being the

General's fault that Mr. Hopper and others made money in mules and

worthless army blankets. Such things always have been, and always will

be unavoidable when this great country of ours rises from the deep sleep

of security into which her sons have lulled her, to demand her sword. We

shall never be able to realize that the maintenance of a standing army

of comfortable size will save millions in the end. So much for Democracy

when it becomes a catchword.

The General was a good man, had he done nothing else than encourage the

Western Sanitary Commission, that glorious army of drilled men and women

who gave up all to relieve the suffering which the war was causing.

Would that a novel--a great novel--might be written setting forth with

truth its doings. The hero of it could be Calvin Brinsmade, and a nobler

hero than he was never under a man's hand. For the glory of generals

fades beside his glory.

It was Mr. Brinsmade's carriage that brought Mrs. Brice home from

her trying day in the hospital. Stephen, just returned from drill

at Verandah hall, met her at the door. She would not listen to his

entreaties to rest, but in the evening, as usual, took her sewing to the

porch behind the house, where there was a little breeze.

“Such a singular thing happened to-day, Stephen,” she said. “It was

while we were trying to save the life of a poor sergeant who had lost

his arm. I hope we shall be allowed to have him here. He is suffering

horribly.”

“What happened, mother?” he asked.

“It was soon after I had come upon this poor fellow,” she said. “I saw

the--the flies around him. And as I got down beside him to fan them away

I had such a queer sensation. I knew that some one was standing behind

me, looking at me. Then Dr. Allerdyce came, and I asked him about the

man, and he said there was a chance of saving him if we could only get

help. Then some one spoke up,--such a sweet voice. It was that Miss

Carvel my dear, with whom you had such a strange experience when you

bought Hester, and to whose party you once went. Do you remember that

they offered us their house in Glencoe when the Judge was so ill?”

“Yes,” said Stephen.

“She is a wonderful creature,” his mother continued. “Such personality,

such life! And wasn't it a remarkable offer for a Southern woman to

make? They feel so bitterly, and--and I do not blame them.” The good

lady put down on her lap the night-shirt she was making. “I saw how

it happened. The girl was carried away by her pity. And, my dear, her

capability astonished me. One might have thought that she had always

been a nurse. The experience was a dreadful one for me--what must

it have been for her. After the operation was over, I followed her

downstairs to where she was standing with her father in front of the

building, waiting for their carriage. I felt that I must say something

to her, for in all my life I have never seen a nobler thing done. When I

saw her there, I scarcely knew what to say. Words seemed so inadequate.

It was then three o'clock, and she had been working steadily in that

place since morning. I am sure she could not have borne it much longer.

Sheer courage carried her through it, I know, for her hand trembled so

when I took it, and she was very pale. She usually has color, I believe.

Her father, the Colonel, was with her, and he bowed to me with such

politeness. He had stood against the wall all the while we had worked,

and he brought a mattress for us. I have heard that his house is

watched, and that they have him under suspicion for communicating

with the Confederate leaders.” Mrs. Brice sighed. “He seems such a fine

character. I hope they will not get into any trouble.”

“I hope not, mother,” said Stephen.

It was two mornings later that Judge Whipple and Stephen drove to the

Iron Mountain depot, where they found a German company of Home Guards

drawn up. On the long wooden platform under the sheds Stephen

caught sight of Herr Korner and Herr Hauptmann amid a group of their

countrymen. Little Korner came forward to clasp his hands. The tears ran

on his cheeks, and he could not speak for emotion. Judge Whipple, grim

and silent, stood apart. But he uncovered his head with the others when

the train rolled in. Reverently they entered a car where the pine boxes

were piled one on another, and they bore out the earthly remains of

Captain Carl Richter.

Far from the land of his birth, among those same oaks on Bloody Hill

where brave Lyon fell, he had gladly given up his life for the new

country and the new cause he had made his own.

That afternoon in the cemetery, as the smoke of the last salute to a

hero hung in the flickering light and drifted upward through the

great trees, as the still air was yet quivering with the notes of the

bugle-call which is the soldiers requiem, a tall figure, gaunt and bent,

stepped out from behind the blue line of the troops. It was that of

Judge Whipple. He carried in his hand a wreath of white roses--the first

of many to be laid on Richter's grave.

Poor Richter! How sad his life had been! And yet he had not filled it

with sadness. For many a month, and many a year, Stephen could not look

upon his empty place without a pang. He missed the cheery songs and the

earnest presence even more than he had thought. Carl Richter,--as his

father before him,--had lived for others. Both had sacrificed their

bodies for a cause. One of them might be pictured as he trudged with

Father Jahn from door to door through the Rhine country, or shouldering

at sixteen a heavy musket in the Landwehr's ranks to drive the tyrant

Napoleon from the beloved Fatherland Later, aged before his time,

his wife dead of misery, decrepit and prison-worn in the service of a

thankless country, his hopes lived again in Carl, the swordsman of Jena.

Then came the pitiful Revolution, the sundering of all ties, the elder

man left to drag out his few weary days before a shattered altar. In

Carl a new aspiration had sprung up, a new patriotism stirred. His, too,

had been the sacrifice. Happy in death, for he had helped perpetuate

that great Union which should be for all time the refuge of the

oppressed.

CHAPTER IV. THE LIST OF SIXTY

One chilling day in November, when an icy rain was falling on the black

mud of the streets, Virginia looked out of the window. Her eye was

caught by two horses which were just skeletons with the skin stretched

over them. One had a bad sore on his flank, and was lame. They were

pulling a rattle-trap farm wagon with a buckled wheel. On the seat a

man, pallid and bent and scantily clad, was holding the reins in his

feeble hands, while beside him cowered a child of ten wrapped in a

ragged blanket. In the body of the wagon, lying on a mattress pressed

down in the midst of broken, cheap furniture and filthy kitchen ware,

lay a gaunt woman in the rain. Her eyes were closed, and a hump on the

surface of the dirty quilt beside her showed that a child must be there.

From such a picture the girl fled in tears. But the sight of it, and of

others like it, haunted her for weeks. Through those last dreary days of

November, wretched families, which a year since had been in health and

prosperity, came to the city, beggars, with the wrecks of their homes.

The history of that hideous pilgrimage across a state has never been

written. Still they came by the hundred, those families. Some brought

little corpses to be buried. The father of one, hale and strong when

they started, died of pneumonia in the public lodging-house. The walls

of that house could tell many tales to wring the heart. So could Mr.

Brinsmade, did he choose to speak of his own charities. He found

time, between his labors at the big hospital newly founded, and his

correspondence, and his journeys of love,--between early morning and

midnight,--to give some hours a day to the refugees.

Throughout December they poured in on the afflicted city, already

overtaxed. All the way to Springfield the road was lined with remains

of articles once dear--a child's doll, a little rocking-chair, a colored

print that has hung in the best room, a Bible text.

Anne Brinsmade, driven by Nicodemus, went from house to house to solicit

old clothes, and take them to the crowded place of detention. Christmas

was drawing near--a sorry Christmas, in truth. And many of the wanderers

were unclothed and unfed.

More battles had been fought; factions had arisen among Union men.

Another general had come to St. Louis to take charge of the Department,

and the other with his wondrous body-guard was gone.

The most serious problem confronting the new general--was how to care

for the refugees. A council of citizens was called at headquarters, and

the verdict went forth in the never-to-be-forgotten Orders No. 24.

“Inasmuch,” said the General, “as the Secession army had driven these

people from their homes, Secession sympathizers should be made to

support them.” He added that the city was unquestionably full of these.

Indignation was rife the day that order was published. Sixty prominent

“disloyalists” were to be chosen and assessed to make up a sum of ten

thousand dollars.

“They may sell my house over my head before I will pay a cent,” cried

Mr. Russell. And he meant it. This was the way the others felt. Who were

to be on this mysterious list of “Sixty”? That was the all-absorbing

question of the town. It was an easy matter to pick the conspicuous

ones. Colonel Carvel was sure to be there, and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.

Russell and Mr. James, and Mr. Worington the lawyer. Mrs. Addison Colfax

lived for days in a fermented state of excitement which she declared

would break her down; and which, despite her many cares and worries,

gave her niece not a little amusement. For Virginia was human, and one

morning she went to her aunt's room to read this editorial from the

newspaper:-- “For the relief of many palpitating hearts it may be well

to state that we understand only two ladies are on the ten thousand

dollar list.”

“Jinny,” she cried, “how can you be so cruel as to read me that, when

you know that I am in a state of frenzy now? How does that relieve me?

It makes it an absolute certainty that Madame Jules and I will have to

pay. We are the only women of importance in the city.”

That afternoon she made good her much-uttered threat, and drove to

Bellegarde. Only the Colonel and Virginia and Mammy Easter and Ned were

left in the big house. Rosetta and Uncle Ben and Jackson had been

hired out, and the horses sold,--all save old Dick, who was running,

long-haired, in the fields at Glencoe.

Christmas eve was a steel-gray day, and the sleet froze as it fell.

Since morning Colonel Carvel had sat poking the sitting-room fire, or

pacing the floor restlessly. His occupation was gone. He was observed

night and day by Federal detectives. Virginia strove to amuse him, to

conceal her anxiety as she watched him. Well she knew that but for her

he would long since have fled southward, and often in the bitterness of

the night-time she blamed herself for not telling him to go. Ten years

had seemed to pass over him since the war had begun.

All day long she had been striving to put away from her the memory of

Christmas eves past and gone of her father's early home-coming from the

store, a mysterious smile on his face; of Captain Lige stamping noisily

into the house, exchanging uproarious jests with Ned and Jackson. The

Captain had always carried under his arm a shapeless bundle which he

would confide to Ned with a knowing wink. And then the house would be

lighted from top to bottom, and Mr. Russell and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.

Brinsmade came in for a long evening with Mr. Carvel over great bowls of

apple toddy and egg-nog. And Virginia would have her own friends in the

big parlor. That parlor was shut up now, and icy cold.

Then there was Judge Whipple, the joyous event of whose year was his

Christmas dinner at Colonel Carvel's house. Virginia pictured him this

year at Mrs. Brice's little table, and wondered whether he would miss

them as much as they missed him. War may break friendships, but it

cannot take away the sacredness of memories.

The sombre daylight was drawing to an early close as the two stood

looking out of the sitting-room window. A man's figure muffled in

a greatcoat slanting carefully across the street caught their eyes.

Virginia started. It was the same United States deputy marshal she had

seen the day before at Mr. Russell's house.

“Pa,” she cried, “do you think he is coming here?”

“I reckon so, honey.”

“The brute! Are you going to pay?”

“No, Jinny.”

“Then they will take away the furniture.”

“I reckon they will.”

“Pa, you must promise me to take down the mahogany bed in your room.

It--it was mother's. I could not bear to see them take that. Let me put

it in the garret.”

The Colonel was distressed, but he spoke without a tremor.

“No, Jinny. We must leave this house just as it is.” Then he added,

strangely enough for him, “God's will be done.”

The bell rang sharply. And Ned, who was cook and housemaid, came in with

his apron on.

“Does you want to see folks, Marse Comyn?”

The Colonel rose, and went to the door himself. He was an imposing

figure as he stood in the windy vestibule, confronting the deputy.

Virginia's first impulse was to shrink under the stairs. Then she came

out and stood beside her father.

“Are you Colonel Carvel?”

“I reckon I am. Will you come in?”

The officer took off his cap. He was a young man with a smooth face, and

a frank brown eye which paid its tribute to Virginia. He did not appear

to relish the duty thrust upon him. He fumbled in his coat and drew from

his inner pocket a paper.

“Colonel Carvel,” said he, “by order of Major General Halleck, I serve

you with this notice to pay the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars

for the benefit of the destitute families which the Rebels have driven

from their homes. In default of payment within a reasonable time such

personal articles will be seized and sold at public auction as will

satisfy the demand against you.”

The Colonel took the paper. “Very well, sir,” he said. “You may tell the

General that the articles may be seized. That I will not, while in my

right mind, be forced to support persons who have no claim upon me.”

It was said in the tone in which he might have refused an invitation to

dinner. The deputy marvelled. He had gone into many houses that week;

had seen indignation, hysterics, frenzy. He had even heard men and women

whose sons and brothers were in the army of secession proclaim their

loyalty to the Union. But this dignity, and the quiet scorn of the girl

who had stood silent beside them, were new. He bowed, and casting his

eyes to the vestibule, was glad to escape from the house.

The Colonel shut the door. Then he turned toward Virginia, thoughtfully

pulled his goatee, and laughed gently. “Lordy, we haven't got three

hundred and fifty dollars to our names,” said he.

The climate of St. Louis is capricious. That fierce valley of the

Missouri, which belches fitful blizzards from December to March, is

sometimes quiet. Then the hot winds come up from the Gulf, and sleet

melts, and windows are opened. In those days the streets will be fetlock

deep in soft mud. It is neither summer, nor winter, nor spring, nor

anything.

It was such a languorous afternoon in January that a furniture van,

accompanied by certain nondescript persons known as United States

Police, pulled up at the curb in front of Mr. Carvel's house. Eugenie,

watching at the window across the street, ran to tell her father, who

came out on his steps and reviled the van with all the fluency of his

French ancestors.

Mammy Easter opened the door, and then stood with her arms akimbo, amply

filling its place. Her lips protruded, and an expression of defiance

hard to describe sat on her honest black face.

“Is this Colonel Carvel's house?”

“Yassir. I 'low you knows dat jes as well as me.” An embarrassed

silence, and then from Mammy, “Whaffor you laffin at?”

“Is the Colonel at home?”

“Now I reckon you knows dat he ain't. Ef he was, you ain't come here

'quirin' in dat honey voice.” (Raising her own voice.) “You tink I

dunno whaffor you come? You done come heah to rifle, an' to loot, an'

to steal, an' to seize what ain't your'n. You come heah when young Marse

ain't to home ter rob him.” (Still louder.) “Ned, whaffor you hidin'

yonder? Ef yo' ain't man to protect Marse Comyn's prop-ty, jes han' over

Marse Comyn's gun.”

The marshal and his men had stood, half amused, more than half baffled

by this unexpected resistance. Mammy Easter looked so dangerous that it

was evident she was not to be passed without extreme bodily discomfort.

“Is your mistress here?”

This question was unfortunate in the extreme.

“You--you white trash!” cried Mammy, bursting with indignation. “Who is

you to come heah 'quiring fo' her! I ain't agwine--”

“Mammy!”

“Yas'm! Yas, Miss Jinny.” Mammy backed out of the door and clutched at

her bandanna.

“Mammy, what is all this noise about?” The torrent was loosed once more.

“These heah men, Miss Jinny, was gwine f'r t' carry away all yo' pa's

blongin's. I jes' tol' 'em dey ain't comin' in ovah dis heah body.”

The deputy had his foot on the threshold. He caught sight of the face of

Miss Carvel within, and stopped abruptly.

“I have a warrant here from the Provost Marshal, ma'am, to seize

personal property to satisfy a claim against Colonel Carvel.”

Virginia took the order, read it, and handed it back. “I do not see how

I am to prevent you,” she said. The deputy was plainly abashed.

“I'm sorry, Miss. I--I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it's got to be

done.”

Virginia nodded coldly. And still the man hesitated. “What are you

waiting for?” she said.

The deputy wiped his muddy feet. He made his men do likewise. Then he

entered the chill drawing-room, threw open the blinds and glanced around

him.

“I expect all that we want is right here,” he said. And at the sight of

the great chandelier, with its cut-glass crystals, he whistled. Then he

walked over to the big English Rothfield piano and lifted the lid.

The man was a musician. Involuntarily he rested himself on the mahogany

stool, and ran his fingers over the keys. They seemed to Virginia,

standing motionless in the ball, to give out the very chords of agony.

The piano, too, had been her mother's. It had once stood in the brick

house of her grandfather Colfax at Halcyondale. The songs of Beatrice

lay on the bottom shelf of the what-not near by. No more, of an evening

when they were alone, would Virginia quietly take them out and play

them over to the Colonel, as he sat dreaming in the window with his

cigar,--dreaming of a field on the borders of a wood, of a young girl

who held his hand, and sang them softly to herself as she walked by his

side. And, when they reached the house in the October twilight, she had

played them for him on this piano. Often he had told Virginia of those

days, and walked with her over those paths.

The deputy closed the lid, and sent out to the van for a truck. Virginia

stirred. For the first time she heard the words of Mammy Easter.

“Come along upstairs wid yo' Mammy, honey. Dis ain't no place for us,

I reckon.” Her words were the essence of endearment. And yet, while she

pronounced them, she glared unceasingly at the intruders. “Oh, de good

Lawd'll burn de wicked!”

The men were removing the carved legs. Virginia went back into the room

and stood before the deputy.

“Isn't there something else you could take? Some jewellery?” She

flushed. “I have a necklace--”

“No, miss. This warrant's on your father. And there ain't nothing quite

so salable as pianos.”

She watched them, dry-eyed, as they carried it away. It seemed like a

coffin. Only Mammy Easter guessed at the pain in Virginia's breast, and

that was because there was a pain in her own. They took the rosewood

what-not, but Virginia snatched the songs before the men could

touch them, and held them in her arms. They seized the mahogany

velvet-bottomed chairs, her uncle's wedding present to her mother; and,

last of all, they ruthlessly tore up the Brussels carpet, beginning near

the spot where Clarence had spilled ice-cream at one of her children's

parties.

She could not bear to look into the dismantled room when they had gone.

It was the embodied wreck of her happiness. Ned closed the blinds once

more, and she herself turned the key in the lock, and went slowly up the

stairs.

CHAPTER V. THE AUCTION

“Stephen,” said the Judge, in his abrupt way, “there isn't a great deal

doing. Let's go over to the Secesh property sales.”

Stephen looked up in surprise. The seizures and intended sale of

secession property had stirred up immense bitterness and indignation in

the city. There were Unionists (lukewarm) who denounced the measure as

unjust and brutal. The feelings of Southerners, avowed and secret, may

only be surmised. Rigid ostracism was to be the price of bidding on any

goods displayed, and men who bought in handsome furniture on that day

because it was cheap have still, after forty years, cause to remember

it.

It was not that Stephen feared ostracism. Anne Brinsmade was almost the

only girl left to him from among his former circle of acquaintances.

Miss Carvel's conduct is known. The Misses Russell showed him very

plainly that they disapproved of his politics. The hospitable days at

that house were over. Miss Catherwood, when they met on the street,

pretended not to see him, and Eugenie Renault gave him but a timid nod.

The loyal families to whose houses he now went were mostly Southerners,

in sentiment against forced auctions.

However, he put on his coat, and sallied forth into the sharp air, the

Judge leaning on his arm. They walked for some distance in silence.

“Stephen,” said he, presently, “I guess I'll do a little bidding.”

Stephen did not reply. But he was astonished. He wondered what Mr.

Whipple wanted with fine furniture. And, if he really wished to bid,

Stephen knew likewise that no consideration would stop him.

“You don't approve of this proceeding, sir, I suppose,” said the Judge.

“Yes, sir, on large grounds. War makes many harsh things necessary.”

“Then,” said the Judge, tartly, “by bidding, we help to support starving

Union families. You should not be afraid to bid, sir.”

Stephen bit his lip. Sometimes Mr. Whipple made him very angry.

“I am not afraid to bid, Judge Whipple.” He did not see the smile on the

Judge's face.

“Then you will bid in certain things for me,” said Mr. Whipple. Here

he hesitated, and shook free the rest of the sentence with a wrench.

“Colonel Carvel always had a lot of stuff I wanted. Now I've got the

chance to buy it cheap.”

There was silence again, for the space of a whole block. Finally,

Stephen managed to say:-- “You'll have to excuse me, sir. I do not care

to do that.”

“What?” cried the Judge, stopping in the middle of a cross-street, so

that a wagon nearly ran over his toes.

“I was once a guest in Colonel Carvel's house, sir. And--”

“And what?”

Neither the young man nor the old knew all it was costing the other to

say these things. The Judge took a grim pleasure in eating his heart.

And as for Stephen, he often went to his office through Locust Street,

which was out of his way, in the hope that he might catch a glimpse of

Virginia. He had guessed much of the privations she had gone through.

He knew that the Colonel had hired out most of his slaves, and he had

actually seen the United States Police drive across Eleventh Street with

the piano that she had played on.

The Judge was laughing quietly,--not a pleasant laugh to hear,--as they

came to Morgan's great warerooms. A crowd blocked the pavement, and

hustled and shoved at the doors,--roughs, and soldiers off duty, and

ladies and gentlemen whom the Judge and Stephen knew, and some of whom

they spoke to. All of these were come out of curiosity, that they might

see for themselves any who had the temerity to bid on a neighbor's

household goods. The long hall, which ran from street to street, was

packed, the people surging backward and forward, and falling roughly

against the mahogany pieces; and apologizing, and scolding, and swearing

all in a breath. The Judge, holding tightly to Stephen, pushed his way

fiercely to the stand, vowing over and over that the commotion was a

secession trick to spoil the furniture and stampede the sale. In truth,

it was at the Judge's suggestion that a blue provost's guard was called

in later to protect the seized property.

How many of those mahogany pieces, so ruthlessly tumbled about before

the public eye, meant a heartache! Wedding presents of long ago, dear to

many a bride with silvered hair, had been torn from the corner where the

children had played--children who now, alas, were grown and gone to war.

Yes, that was the Brussels rug that had lain before the fire, and which

the little feet had worn in the corner. Those were the chairs the little

hands had harnessed, four in a row, and fallen on its side was the

armchair--the stage coach itself. There were the books, held up to

common gaze, that a beloved parent had thumbed with affection. Yes, and

here in another part of the hall were the family horses and the family

carriage that had gone so often back and forth from church with the

happy brood of children, now scattered and gone to war.

As Stephen reached his place beside the Judge, Mr. James's effects were

being cried. And, if glances could have killed, many a bidder would have

dropped dead. The heavy dining-room table which meant so much to the

family went for a song to a young man recently come from Yankeeland,

whose open boast it was--like Eliphalet's secret one--that he would one

day grow rich enough to snap his fingers in the face of the Southern

aristocrats. Mr. James was not there. But Mr. Catherwood, his face

haggard and drawn, watched the sideboard he had given his wife on her

silver wedding being sold to a pawnbroker.

Stephen looked in vain for Colonel Carvel--for Virginia. He did not want

to see them there. He knew by heart the list of things which had been

taken from their house. He understood the feeling which had sent the

Judge here to bid them in. And Stephen honored him the more.

When the auctioneer came to the Carvel list, and the well-known name was

shouted out, the crowd responded with a stir and pressed closer to the

stand. And murmurs were plainly heard in more than one direction.

“Now, gentlemen, and ladies,” said the seller, “this here is a genuine

English Rothfield piano once belonging to Colonel Carvel, and the

celebrated Judge Colfax of Kaintucky.” He lingered fondly over the

names, that the impression might have time to sink deep. “This here

magnificent instrument's worth at the very least” (another pause)

“twelve hundred dollars. What am I bid?”

He struck a base note of the keys, then a treble, and they vibrated

in the heated air of the big hall. Had he hit the little C of the top

octave, the tinkle of that also might have been heard.

“Gentlemen and ladies, we have to begin somewheres. What am I bid?”

A menacing murmur gave place to the accusing silence. Some there were

who gazed at the Rothfield with longing eyes, but who had no intention

of committing social suicide. Suddenly a voice, the rasp of which

penetrated to St. Charles Street, came out with a bid. The owner was

a seedy man with a straw-colored, drunkard's mustache. He was leaning

against the body of Mrs. Russell's barouche (seized for sale), and those

about him shrank away as from smallpox. His hundred-dollar offer was

followed by a hiss. What followed next Stephen will always remember.

When Judge Whipple drew himself up to his full six feet, that was a

warning to those that knew him. As he doubled the bid, the words came

out with the aggressive distinctness of a man who through a long life

has been used to opposition. He with the gnawed yellow mustache pushed

himself clear of the barouche, his smouldering cigar butt dropping to

the floor. But there were no hisses now.

And this is how Judge Whipple braved public opinion once more. As he

stood there, defiant, many were the conjectures as to what he could wish

to do with the piano of his old friend. Those who knew the Judge (and

there were few who did not) pictured to themselves the dingy little

apartment where he lived, and smiled. Whatever his detractors might have

said of him, no one was ever heard to avow that he had bought or sold

anything for gain.

A tremor ran through the people. Could it have been of admiration for

the fine old man who towered there glaring defiance at those about him?

“Give me a strong and consistent enemy,” some great personage has said,

“rather than a lukewarm friend.” Three score and five years the Judge

had lived, and now some were beginning to suspect that he had a heart.

Verily he had guarded his secret well. But it was let out to many more

that day, and they went home praising him who had once pronounced his

name with bitterness.

This is what happened. Before he of the yellow mustache could pick up

his cigar from the floor and make another bid, the Judge had cried out

a sum which was the total of Colonel Carvel's assessment. Many recall

to this day how fiercely he frowned when the applause broke forth

of itself; and when he turned to go they made a path for him, in

admiration, the length of the hall, down which he stalked, looking

neither to the right nor left. Stephen followed him, thankful for the

day which had brought him into the service of such a man.

And so it came about that the other articles were returned to Colonel

Carvel with the marshal's compliments, and put back into the cold parlor

where they had stood for many years. The men who brought them offered to

put down the carpet, but by Virginia's orders the rolls were stood up in

the corner, and the floor left bare. And days passed into weeks, and no

sign or message came from Judge Whipple in regard to the piano he had

bought. Virginia did not dare mention it to the Colonel.

Where was it? It had been carried by six sweating negroes up the

narrow stairs into the Judge's office. Stephen and Shadrach had by Mr.

Whipple's orders cleared a corner of his inner office and bedroom of

papers and books and rubbish, and there the bulky instrument was finally

set up. It occupied one-third of the space. The Judge watched the

proceeding grimly, choking now and again from the dust that was raised,

yet uttering never a word. He locked the lid when the van man handed him

the key, and thrust that in his pocket.

Stephen had of late found enough to do in St. Louis. He was the kind of

man to whom promotions came unsought, and without noise. In the autumn

he had been made a captain in the Halleck Guards of the State Militia,

as a reward for his indefatigable work in the armories and his knowledge

of tactics. Twice his company had been called out at night, and once

they made a campaign as far as the Merimec and captured a party of

recruits who were destined for Jefferson Davis. Some weeks passed before

Mr. Brinsmade heard of his promotion and this exploit, and yet scarcely

a day went by that he did not see the young man at the big hospital. For

Stephen helped in the work of the Sanitary Commission too, and so strove

to make up in zeal for the service in the field which he longed to give.

After Christmas Mr. and Mrs. Brinsmade moved out to their place on the

Bellefontaine Road. This was to force Anne to take a rest. For the

girl was worn out with watching at the hospitals, and with tending

the destitute mothers and children from the ranks of the refugees. The

Brinsmade place was not far from the Fair Grounds,--now a receiving

camp for the crude but eager regiments of the Northern states. To Mr.

Brinsmade's, when the day's duty was done, the young Union officers

used to ride, and often there would be half a dozen of them to tea. That

house, and other great houses on the Bellefontaine Road with which this

history has no occasion to deal, were as homes to many a poor fellow who

would never see home again. Sometimes Anne would gather together such

young ladies of her acquaintance from the neighbor hood and the city as

their interests and sympathies permitted to waltz with a Union officer,

and there would be a little dance. To these dances Stephen Brice was

usually invited.

One such occasion occurred on a Friday in January, and Mr. Brinsmade

himself called in his buggy and drove Stephen to the country early in

the afternoon. He and Anne went for a walk along the river, the surface

of which was broken by lumps of yellow ice. Gray clouds hung low in the

sky as they picked their way over the frozen furrows of the ploughed

fields. The grass was all a yellow-brown, but the north wind which

swayed the bare trees brought a touch of color to Anne's cheeks. Before

they realized where they were, they had nearly crossed the Bellegarde

estate, and the house itself was come into view, standing high on the

slope above the withered garden. They halted.

“The shutters are up,” said Stephen. “I understood that Mrs. Colfax had

come out here not long a--”

“She came out for a day just before Christina,” said Anne, smiling, “and

then she ran off to Kentucky. I think she was afraid that she was one of

the two women on the list of Sixty.”

“It must have been a blow to her pride when she found that she was not,”

said Stephen, who had a keen remembrance of her conduct upon a certain

Sunday not a year gone.

Impelled by the same inclination, they walked in silence to the house

and sat down on the edge of the porch. The only motion in the view was

the smoke from the slave quarters twisting in the wind, and the hurrying

ice in the stream.

“Poor Jinny!” said Anne, with a sigh, “how she loved to romp! What good

times we used to have here together!”

“Do you think that she is unhappy?” Stephen demanded, involuntarily.

“Oh, yes,” said Anne. “How can you ask? But you could not make her show

it. The other morning when she came out to our house I found her sitting

at the piano. I am sure there were tears in her eyes, but she would not

let me see them. She made some joke about Spencer Catherwood running

away. What do you think the Judge will do with that piano, Stephen?”

He shook his head.

“The day after they put it in his room he came in with a great black

cloth, which he spread over it. You cannot even see the feet.”

There was a silence. And Anne, turning to him timidly, gave him a long,

searching look.

“It is growing late,” she said. “I think that we ought to go back.”

They went out by the long entrance road, through the naked woods.

Stephen said little. Only a little while before he had had one of those

vivid dreams of Virginia which left their impression, but not their

substance, to haunt him. On those rare days following the dreams her

spirit had its mastery over his. He pictured her then with a glow on her

face which was neither sadness nor mirth,--a glow that ministered to

him alone. And yet, he did not dare to think that he might have won her,

even if politics and war had not divided them.

When the merriment of the dance was at its height that evening, Stephen

stood at the door of the long room, meditatively watching the bright

gowns and the flash of gold on the uniforms as they flitted past.

Presently the opposite door opened, and he heard Mr. Brinsmade's voice

mingling with another, the excitable energy of which recalled some

familiar episode. Almost--so it seemed--at one motion, the owner of the

voice had come out of the door and had seized Stephen's hand in a warm

grasp,--a tall and spare figure in the dress of a senior officer. The

military frock, which fitted the man's character rather than the man,

was carelessly open, laying bare a gold-buttoned white waistcoat and an

expanse of shirt bosom which ended in a black stock tie. The ends of the

collar were apart the width of the red clipped beard, and the mustache

was cropped straight along the line of the upper lip. The forehead rose

high, and was brushed carelessly free of the hair. The nose was almost

straight, but combative. A fire fairly burned in the eyes.

“The boy doesn't remember me,” said the gentleman, in quick tones,

smiling at Mr. Brinsmade.

“Yes, sir, I do,” Stephen made haste to answer. He glanced at the star

on the shoulder strap, and said. “You are General Sherman.”

“First rate!” laughed the General, patting him. “First rate!”

“Now in command at Camp Benton, Stephen,” Mr. Brinsmade put in. “Won't

you sit down, General?”

“No,” said the General, emphatically waving away the chair. “No,

rather stand.” Then his keen face suddenly lighted with amusement,--and

mischief, Stephen thought. “So you've heard of me since we met, sir?”

“Yes, General.”

“Humph! Guess you heard I was crazy,” said the General, in his downright

way.

Stephen was struck dumb.

“He's been reading the lies in the newspapers too, Brinsmade,” the

General went on rapidly. “I'll make 'em eat their newspapers for saying

I was crazy. That's the Secretary of War's doings. Ever tell you what

Cameron did, Brinsmade? He and his party were in Louisville last fall,

when I was serving in Kentucky, and came to my room in the Galt House.

Well, we locked the door, and Miller sent us up a good lunch and wine,

After lunch, the Secretary lay on my bed, and we talked things over. He

asked me what I thought about things in Kentucky. I told him. I got a

map. I said, 'Now, Mr. Secretary, here is the whole Union line from the

Potomac to Kansas. Here's McClellan in the East with one hundred miles

of front. Here's Fremont in the West with one hundred miles. Here we

are in Kentucky, in the centre, with three hundred miles to defend.

McClellan has a hundred thousand men, Fremont has sixty thousand. You

give us fellows with over three hundred miles only eighteen thousand.'

'How many do you want?' says Cameron, still on the bed. 'Two hundred

thousand before we get through,' said I. Cameron pitched up his hands

in the air. 'Great God?' says he, 'where are they to come from?' 'The

northwest is chuck full of regiments you fellows at Washington won't

accept,' said I. 'Mark my words, Mr. Secretary, you'll need 'em all and

more before we get done with this Rebellion.' Well, sir, he was very

friendly before we finished, and I thought the thing was all thrashed

out. No, sir! he goes back to Washington and gives it out that I'm

crazy, and want two hundred thousand men in Kentucky. Then I am ordered

to report to Halleck in Missouri here, and he calls me back from Sedalia

because he believes the lies.”

Stephen, who had in truth read the stories in question a month or two

before, could not conceal his embarrassment He looked at the man in

front of him,--alert, masterful intelligent, frank to any stranger who

took his fancy,--and wondered how any one who had talked to him could

believe them.

Mr. Brinsmade smiled. “They have to print something, General,” he said.

“I'll give 'em something to print later on,” answered the General,

grimly. Then his expression changed. “Brinsmade, you fellows did have

a session with Fremont, didn't you? Anderson sent me over here last

September, and the first man I ran across at the Planters' House was

Appleton. '--What are you in town for?' says he. 'To see Fremont,'

I said. You ought to have heard Appleton laugh. 'You don't think

Fremont'll see you, do you?' says he. 'Why not?' 'Well,' says Tom, 'go

'round to his palace at six to-morrow morning and bribe that Hungarian

prince who runs his body-guard to get you a good place in the line of

senators and governors and first citizens, and before nightfall you

may get a sight of him, since you come from Anderson. Not one man in

a hundred,' says Appleton, I not one man in a hundred, reaches his

chief-of-staff.' Next morning,” the General continued in a staccato

which was often his habit, “had breakfast before daybreak and went

'round there. Place just swarming with Californians--army contracts.”

(The General sniffed.) “Saw Fremont. Went back to hotel. More

Californians, and by gad--old Baron Steinberger with his nose hanging

over the register.”

“Fremont was a little difficult to get at, General,” said Mr. Brinsmade.

“Things were confused and discouraged when those first contracts were

awarded. Fremont was a good man, and it wasn't his fault that the

inexperience of his quartermasters permitted some of those men to get

rich.”

“No,” said the General. “His fault! Certainly not. Good man! To be sure

he was--didn't get along with Blair. These court-martials you're having

here now have stirred up the whole country. I guess we'll hear now how

those fortunes were made. To listen to those witnesses lie about each

other on the stand is better than the theatre.”

Stephen laughed at the comical and vivid manner in which the General set

this matter forth. He himself had been present one day of the sittings

of the court-martial when one of the witnesses on the prices of mules

was that same seedy man with the straw-colored mustache who had bid for

Virginia's piano against the Judge.

“Come, Stephen,” said the General, abruptly, “run and snatch one of

those pretty girls from my officers. They're having more than their

share.”

“They deserve more, sir,” answered Stephen. Whereupon the General laid

his hand impulsively on the young man's shoulder, divining what Stephen

did not say.

“Nonsense!” said be; “you are doing the work in this war, not we. We

do the damage--you repair it. If it were not for Mr. Brinsmade and you

gentlemen who help him, where would our Western armies be? Don't you

go to the front yet a while, young man. We need the best we have

in reserve.” He glanced critically at Stephen. “You've had military

training of some sort?”

“He's a captain in the Halleck Guards, sir,” said Mr. Brinsmade,

generously, “and the best drillmaster we've had in this city. He's seen

service, too, General.”

Stephen reddened furiously and started to protest, when the General

cried:-- “It's more than I have in this war. Come, come, I knew he was a

soldier. Let's see what kind of a strategist he'll make. Brinsmade, have

you got such a thing as a map?” Mr. Brinsmade had, and led the way back

into the library. The General shut the door, lighted a cigar with a

single vigorous stroke of a match, and began to smoke with quick puffs.

Stephen was puzzled how to receive the confidences the General was

giving out with such freedom.

When the map was laid on the table, the General drew a pencil from his

pocket and pointed to the state of Kentucky. Then he drew a line from

Columbus to Bowling Green, through Forts Donelson and Henry.

“Now, Stephen,” said he, “there's the Rebel line. Show me the proper

place to break it.”

Stephen hesitated a while, and then pointed at the centre.

“Good!” said the General. “Very good!” He drew a heavy line across the

first, and it ran almost in the bed of the Tennessee River. He swung on

Mr. Brinsmade. “Very question Halleck asked me the other day, and that's

how I answered it. Now, gentlemen, there's a man named Grant down in

that part of the country. Keep your eyes on him. Ever heard of him,

Brinsmade? He used to live here once, and a year ago he was less than I

was. Now he's a general.”

The recollection of the scene in the street by the Arsenal that May

morning not a year gone came to Stephen with a shock.

“I saw him,” he cried; “he was Captain Grant that lived on the Gravois

Road. But surely this can't be the same man who seized Paducah and was

in that affair at Belmont.”

“By gum!” said the General, laughing. “Don't wonder you're surprised.

Grant has stuff in him. They kicked him around Springfield awhile, after

the war broke out, for a military carpet-bagger. Then they gave him for

a regiment the worst lot of ruffians you ever laid eyes on. He fixed

'em. He made 'em walk the plank. He made 'em march halfway across the

state instead of taking the cars the Governor offered. Belmont! I guess

he is the man that chased the Rebs out of Belmont. Then his boys broke

loose when they got into the town. That wasn't Grant's fault. The Rebs

came back and chased 'em out into their boats on the river. Brinsmade,

you remember hearing about that.