This was a needless warning to the boy, who, barefooted and scantily

clad, gave Jack as much as he could do to keep up with him. They had

left the cabin a mile or more behind them to the southeastward, and were

somewhere near the spot Jack had emerged from the cypress swamp, when

both were brought to a halt by shifting clouds of smoke pouring out from

the underwood.

"Where does that come from?" Jack asked, throwing himself flat to catch

his breath.

"Dunno, sah. Most likely de sojers sot de brush on fiah."

When Jack was able to look again he saw far in among the trees a moving

wave of light now and then, as the heavy curtain of smoke was lifted

by the wind.

"Good heavens!" he ejaculated; "it was in there I left my friends. Can

we get to them?"

"No, sah; der ain't no crick dah."

"Then!" Jack thought, "have I sacrificed Dick and Jones in my zeal to be

adventurous? Ten minutes sooner, and we could have gone in and brought

them out. But I will find a way in, if I have to clamber over the

tree-tops."

The noise of whirring wings, the rush of startled animals, now drowned

all other sounds, until, through the tumult from the copse far in front

of them, they heard the clatter of swords, and then gigantic figures

breaking toward them, along the edge of the pond.

"Down, down; hug the ground!" Jack cried, pushing the boy down into the

reeds. Almost as they sank, a group of troopers dashed by, talking

excitedly.

"Fire at random, men; that will force them into cover! If we can keep

them in ambush till daylight, the dogs will be here, and we shall nab

them," Jack heard a voice say as the men rode past.

How could they have heard of the affair so quickly, for Jack took it for

granted that it was his exploit that the troopers were afoot to balk?

Still another group passed, and they were talking of the dogs that

were expected.

"You may depend upon it, they are in the swamp. They are making off that

way and hope to mislead us by firing the place. We must keep our eyes

peeled on the swamp. The creek will stop them down yonder, and we must

watch this break in the brush. As soon as the dogs come we shall have no

trouble. They'll run 'em down in no time."

Jack had heard enough to warn him that it was useless to try to

penetrate the swamp. With half of his usual wit, Dick would have been

_en route_ long before this, for the fiery glow in the woods showed that

the flames had been raging some time. Unless Jones's illness had

handicapped him, Dick would be on his way, following Jack's route as

closely as the darkness would permit. But now he must seek means to

evade the dogs. This could be done only by reaching the water and

getting into it far from the point where they proposed to leave it.

"Can you find the boat?" he asked Gabe, who chattered between his teeth.

"I think so, sah."

"Very well; we must find a small stream running into the pond, and then

lead me to the boat."

"Moccasin Brook is close yonder, sah. Shall I go dah?"

"Yes, like lightning."

In a few minutes they were in a sluggish current, running between masses

of reeds and spreading lily-leaves, into the pond. Here Jack repeated

Jones's manoeuvre, except that he was not wise enough in woodcraft to

make use of a tree to get into the water, and thus leave the dogs at the

end of the trail at a point far removed from his real entrance into it.

When they had reached the pond, Jack bade the boy head to the boat. This

they found moored under a bluff, and Gabe, pointing upward, said the

blockhouse was there.

"Very well, you stay here in the boat and wait for me. Don't stir, don't

speak, no matter what you see or hear. Will you do this?"

"Oh, yes, sah; 'deed, 'deed I will, sah!"

Jack crawled up the bank, keeping in the shadow of the uneven ground,

until he reached a point whence he could make out the blockhouse. It was

a half-finished structure of rough logs, and, from the stakes and other

signs of engineering preliminaries, he saw that it was intended as the

guard-house of a fortification. He could hear the drawl of languid,

half-sleepy voices, and, as he pushed farther to the eastward, saw a

group of troopers lounging about a dying fire. A sentry sat before the

doorway, which had no door. He was dozing on his post, though, now and

then he aroused himself to listen to the comments of the men at the

fire. While Jack waited, irresolute what to do, a volley sounded across

the pond, evidently the fellows whom he had seen, keeping up the

fusilade to distract the fugitives.

"They've wasted enough lead to fight a battle," he heard one of the men

say, scornfully.

"Well, that's what lead's for," a philosopher remarked, stirring the

embers. "So it don't get under my skin, I don't care a cuss what they

do with it."

"Oh, your skin's safe enough, Ned. You may adorn a gallows yet."

"If I do, you'll be at one end of the string--and I ain't a-saying which

end, neither," the other retorted, taking a square segment of what

looked like bark, but was really tobacco, and worrying out a circle with

his teeth, until he had detached a large mouthful. This affording his

jaws all the present occupation they seemed capable of undertaking, the

other resumed when the haw-haw that met the sally had subsided:

"Yes, it takes two to make a hangin', just like it takes two to make a

weddin', and you can't allus say just sartin which one has the

lucky end."

This facetious epigram was duly relished, and the sage was turning his

toasted side from the fire to present the other, when the clatter of a

horse coming up the hillside sent the group scouring toward their guns,

stacked near the unfinished walls.

"Sergeant Bland, the captain orders you to take four men and station

them along the north shore of the pond. The rascals are in the cypress

swamp, and are making their way out toward Moccasin Creek. One man can

watch the block-house, and the rest come with me.--Guard, we shall be

within a hundred yards of you. A shot will bring a dozen men to your

assistance; but it isn't likely an enemy can reach this point. The whole

regiment is deployed in the woods."

This was said to the sentry as the group, detailed for Moccasin Creek,

filed off at a double-quick down the hill. In a few moments the

blockhouse was deserted, save by the sentry, who had now risen and was

vigorously pacing before the doorway. Now was Jack's time, if ever. If

he could only whisper to one of the prisoners to call the sentry. But

how? He had nothing to fear in approaching the rear, and in a few

moments he had examined the walls. There was no opening where he could

get speech with those inside. What could he do? To boldly fall upon the

sentry was risky, for the slightest noise would bring rescue from the

front of the bluff. At the base of the wall, where the log-joists rested

upon a huge bowlder, his quick eye detected an air-hole. He examined it

hurriedly. It was evidently below the flooring. So much the better.

Putting his mouth to this, he called out in a piteous tone:

"For God's sake, sentry, give me some water! I'm choking--oh--oh water!

water!"

He waited to see if the sentry would heed the call. He knew that the men

inside could not betray him, for, if they were not asleep, they could

not be sure that the voice was not from among themselves. Sure enough,

the sentry's step ceased. Was he near the door? Jack crept to the

corner. Yes, he had halted at the aperture. Would he enter? Jack stepped

back to his post, as the guard called out:

"Where are you? Which of you wants water? Sing out!"

"Here!" Jack cried, "Here!" Then darting back to the corner, he was just

in time to see the man lean his gun against the door-post, and disappear

in the hut. In an instant the gun was in Jack's possession, and he was

behind the Samaritan in quest of the suffering victim. It was dark as a

tunnel. Jack's victim still gave him the aid he needed, for, as he

groped along the wall, he said, good-humoredly:

"Sing out again, my friend; I haven't got cat's eyes."

Jack's grasp was on his throat and Jack's mouth was at his ear.

"One sound, one word, and this knife goes to the hilt in your heart!"

The astounded man half reeled at this awful apparition in the black

darkness, and he limply yielded to his captor under the impression that

the prisoners were loose and upon him. Jack tied the man's unresisting

hands with his own canteen-straps; then seated him near the wall and

lighted a match. Four men, undisturbed by this swift and noiseless coup,

were stretched on the board floor, breathing the heavy, deep sleep of

exhaustion. Jack aroused them with the greatest difficulty, and found it

still harder to make them understand that, with courage and resolution,

they would be back in their own lines by daylight. When this became

clear to them they were as eager and energetic as their rescuer. The men

were to remain near the blockhouse, but not in it, until Jack returned

for the negro, and then under the lad's guidance they could find their

way to the Union outposts. Just as this was decided, a blood-curdling

baying of bloodhounds echoed across the pond from the distant cabin.

Jack trembled, his mind at once on Dick, so near and yet so far from him

now, in this new danger. There was not a moment to be lost. Perhaps even

now all the night's hard-won victories were to be turned to worse than

defeat--prison, death; for the liberation of slaves was at that time

punishable by hanging in the rebel military code.

"Courage," he said to himself, grimly; "courage, a dog's no worse than a

man. We've overcome them to-night, we ought to be able to tackle the

dogs." This new danger changed his plan slightly. Instead of leaving all

the men, he took one of the rescued four, Tom Denby by name, with him,

and set out for the water. But here another check met him. He suddenly

recalled that the guard at the blockhouse had been scattered along the

shore to watch the debouch from the swamp. This enforced a wide

_détour_, bringing him out in the rear of the boat and nearer the point

where Moccasin Creek emptied into the pond. They reached it finally, and

skirting along the shore kept a keen eye on the water for the boat. They

had skurried along half-way back toward the bluff, listening for a sound

on the water and peering into the black surface, when Denby suddenly

touched Jack's arm.

"There's a horse or cow standing in the water yonder. I've seen it move;

there, look!"

Yes, outlined against the low horizon, a monstrous shape could be

plainly seen. The yelp of the hounds suddenly broke through the air back

of them toward the creek. The monstrous figure started, moved heavily

forward, then seemed as if coming toward them. Both waited, wondering,

curious, terrified. It was within a rod of them, staggering, gasping.

"Oh, God help us! I can go no farther; better be taken than both drown

together."

Jack could hardly repress a cry:

"Jones--Dick! Is it you?"

But whoever it was or whatever it was had no speech to answer this eager

inquiry. They would have sunk in the shallow water if Jack and Denby had

not caught them. Jack had food with him, and, better than all, the

bottle of sorghum whisky. With this restorative, both were soon able to

sit upon the ground and eat. Jack left Denby to feed them, while he went

in search of the boat. He found it just where he had left it, and in a

few minutes, at the head of his little band, he was back at the

blockhouse. The food and Jack's hastily told news had restored Dick to

something like his old friskiness.

"Jericho!" he cried, as the released prisoners, having held back warily

until the color of the new-comers was known, ran forward. "The whole

army is here. I feel as if I were in the Union lines."

"Well, you ain't, by a long shot," Denby cried. "We've got a good hour's

march, and if you're wise, Captain Sprague, you won't waste time for

any frills."

"No time shall be wasted.--Jones, you and Dick take the rear. I, with

Denby, will skirmish; and you, Corporal Kane, shall command the center.

No firing, remember, unless superior force assails us.--Gabe, stick to

the waterside as closely as you can, but make the shortest cut to

the bridge."

Gabe was the most delighted darkey in all Virginia for the next hour. He

led them swiftly and surely, and why shouldn't he? He had passed all his

life in the vicinity, and with the first beams of the sun he pointed to

a narrow wooden bridge.

"Dar's whar de pickets fire across."

As they passed the bridge a loud sound of rushing horses could be heard

in the distance.

"Dick, you take two men and hurry down the road to assure our pickets

that we are friends. We'll take up the planks to give them time!" Jack

shouted, and Dick, with two of the rescued prisoners, dashed away. Many

hands and high hope made short work of the light timbers. As the

pursuing cavalry turned the bend in the road, in sight of the bridge.

Jack's squad gave them a volley and then dashed into cover. The fire was

returned. Dick, coming back at a run, with a dozen dismounted men, heard

the bullets whistling over his head and saw Jack's _posse_ dispersing to

the right and left in the bushes. All were forced into the woods, as the

rebels commanded the highway.

"Where is Jack?" Dick asked, rushing among the men. No one had noticed

him in the panic. He was not in the huddle that cowered in the reeds to

escape the balls, still hurtling viciously over the open. With a cry of

rage and despair, Dick flew into the road, and there, not a hundred

yards from the bridge, he saw the well-known figure prone on the red

earth motionless--dead? Heedless of the warning cries of the others,

Dick tore madly to the body, and with a wild cry fell upon the lifeless

figure, weltering in blood.

CHAPTER XXVII.

"THE ABSENT ARE ALWAYS IN THE WRONG."

Under Vincent's ardent escort Mrs. Sprague and Merry traveled from

Richmond northward in something like haste and with as much comfort as

was possible to the limited means of transportation at the command of

the Confederate commissary. Even in those early days of the war, the

railway system of the South was worn out and inadequate. Such a luxury

as a parlor car was unknown. The trains were filled with military

personages on their way to the field. Mrs. Sprague and Merry were the

only women in the car in which they passed from Richmond to

Fredericksburg. The route brought them through a land covered with

hamlets of camps, drilling squadrons, and the panoply of war. While the

elder lady gave a divided mind to the strange panorama, Merry watched

everything eagerly, amused and interested by this spectacle of

preparation. Such soldiers as she could see distinctly looked like

farmers in holiday homespun; the cavalry like nondescript companies of

backwoods hunters. There seemed to be no uniformity in infantry

equipment or cavalry accoutrements, and the discipline struck her as in

keeping with this diversity of dress and ornament. The men could be seen

hurrying in boyish glee toward the train as it drew near the temporary

station, where mail-bags were thrown out and sometimes supplies of food

or munitions of war. Jocular remarks were passed between the soldiery at

the windows when the wistful groups gathered along the railway line.

"I say, North Cal'ina, you'n's goin' straight through to Yankee land?" a

man in the throng shouts to some one on the train.

"Straight."

"Send us a lock o' Lincoln's hair to poison blind adders, will you?"

"No--promised his scalp to my sweetheart to cover the rocking-chair."

Then, as the laugh that met this sally died away, another humorist

piped, out:

"Tell Uncle Joe Johnston we're just rustin' down here for a fight; ef he

don't hurry up we'll go ahead ourselves. We're drilled down so fine now

that we can't think 'cept by the rule o' tactics."

"Jest you never mind, boys. Uncle Joe'll do enough thinkin' fur ye when

he gets ready to tackle the Yanks."

"Hurrah for Uncle Joe!" And as the cheery cry swelled farther and

farther, the train drew out, everybody looking from the windows as the

patient soldiery straggled back campward.

"Your soldiers seem very gay, Vincent. One would think that war, the

dreadful uncertainty of their movements, absence of friends, and lack of

good food would sadden them," Mrs. Sprague said wistfully at one of the

stations when raillery like this had been even more pointed and

boisterous.

"A wise commander will do all he can to keep his men gay; if they were

not jovial they'd go mad. Think of it! Day after day, week after week,

who knows but year after year, the wearisome monotony of camp and march!

Where the men are educated, or at least readers, they make better

soldiers, because they brood less. Brooding saps the best fiber of the

army. Your Northern men ought to have an advantage there, for education

is more general with you than it is with us. It is not bravery that

makes a man eager for the campaign, it is unrest. As a rule, the best

soldiers in action are those who have a mortal dread of battle."

"That surprises me."

"It is true. I always distrust men that clamor to be led on; they are

the first to break when the brush comes. Jack will tell you that, for we

are agreed on it."

"Jack himself was eager for battle," Mrs. Sprague said, sighing.

"No, Jack was eager for the field. When the battle comes he meets it

coolly, but he has no hunger for it, nor have I. General Johnston is as

brave a man as ever headed an army, yet he has often told us that his

blood freezes when the guns open. I'm sure no one would ever suspect it,

for he is as calm and confident as if he were in a quadrille when he

rides to the field."

"We in the North have heard more of Beauregard than Johnston, yet I

never hear you mention him. Wasn't it he who commanded at Bull Run?"

"Yes and no. General Beauregard is a superb soldier. He is, it has been

agreed among us, better for a desperate charge, or some sudden

inspiration in an emergency, than the complicated strategy that half

wins a battle before it is begun. For example, at Manassas he would have

been defeated, our whole army captured, if fortune had not exposed

General McDowell's plans before they were completed. As it was, we

should have been driven from the field if General Johnston had not come

up in time and rearranged the Confederate lilies."

"Yes, Jack has described that. Battles, after all, are decided by luck."

"And genius."

"Luck won Waterloo."

"Partly, but genius, too, for Wellington and Blücher practiced one of

Napoleon's most perfect maxims, and won because he despised them both so

much that he didn't dream them capable of even imitating him. Nor, left

to themselves, would they have been equal to it. But renegade Frenchmen,

taught under Napoleon's eye, prompted them."

"General Johnston was very considerate to us when we came down. I wish

you would make him know how grateful we are."

"Oh, he couldn't be anything else; he is the ideal of a chivalrous

knight."

"Yes, I believe you claim chivalry as your strong point in the South,

and accuse us of being a race of sordid money-getters."

"I don't, for I know better, but our people do. They will learn better

in time. Men who fought as your army fought at Manassas must be more

than mere sordid hucksters."

"And yet it is curious," Mrs. Sprague continued, musingly, "it is we who

are warring for an idea and you are warring for property."

"How do you mean?" Vincent said, quickly.

"You are fighting to continue slavery, to extend it; we to abolish it or

limit it. But even I can see that slavery is doomed. No Northern party

would ever venture to give it toleration after this."

"But if we succeed, it will exist in our union at least."

"Ah, Vincent, can't you see that such a people as ours may be checked,

beaten even, but they will never give up the Union? Why, much as I love

Jack, I would never let him leave the colors while there was an army in

the field. Don't you know every Northern mother has the same feeling?"

"And every Southern mother, too."

"Yes, I believe that, but there's this difference: Your Southern mothers

are counting on what doesn't exist--a higher physical courage--a prowess

in battle, I may call it, that you must know the Southern soldier has

not, as distinguished from the Northern. As time goes on and the war

does not end; as our armies become disciplined, the confidence that

supports your side will die, and then the struggle, though it may be

prolonged, will end in our triumph."

"I don't think it. I can't think it. But don't let us talk about it. We,

at least, are as much friends as though Jack and I were under one flag,

and if it depends on me it shall be always so."

"If it depends on us, it shall never be otherwise." She gave the young

man a kind, scrutinizing glance, which made his heart beat joyously and

his handsome cheeks mount color. At Fairfax Court-House they said

farewell, the ladies continuing the journey in an ambulance under

Federal guard.

They passed over the long bridge three days after the famous night at

Rosedale, of whose exciting sequel they were profoundly ignorant. In her

husband's time Mrs. Sprague had lived in hotels in the capital, as the

sessions were short; she had never remained in the city when the warm

weather set in, no matter how long the term lasted. But on her arrival

at the old hotel now, she was a good deal disturbed to learn that she

could not be accommodated in her former quarters. The military crowded

not only this but every hotel in the city, and it was only after long

search that a habitable apartment was found in Georgetown. On the whole,

the necessity that drove her thither was not an unmitigated adversity,

for Georgetown then was far more desirable for residence than

Washington. Nothing could be more depressing than the city at that

epoch. Every visible object in the vast circumference of its spreading

limits was then naked unkempt. Even the trees, that ranged themselves

irregularly in the straggling squares and wide street areas, stretched

out a draggled and piebald plumage, as if uncertain whether beauty or

ugliness were their function in the _ensemble_.

The photographic realism of the later newspaper correspondent had not

come into play in these earlier years of the war, and, as a consequence,

the thousands who poured down to the Army of the Potomac beheld the city

with something of the incredulous scorn with which the effeminate

Byzantines regarded the capital of the Goths, when the corrupt

descendant of Constantine made the savage Dacians his allies, rather

than fight them. Patriotism, however, not pride, marked the common mold

of the men of the civil war. It may have been that many an honest

plowman, marching through the muddy quagmires of Pennsylvania Avenue,

bethought himself that such a capital was hardly worth while marching so

far to protect--more emphatically so when the enemy was really to be

found on lines far north of it! Sentiment is the heart and soul of war;

if it were not, there would be no war, for war never gained as much as

it loses; never settled as much as it unsettles; never left victor or

vanquished better when the last gun was fired! In old times the capture

of a nation's capital meant the end of the war, but we have seen

capitals captured and the war not modified a bit by it. Washington was

seized and burned by the British in 1814, and the war went on; Paris was

held by the Germans for half a year, and the war went on.

Our civil war would have been three campaigns shorter--Burnside's,

Hooker's, and the stupid massacre of Pope--to say nothing of the saving

of untold treasure, had the political authorities abandoned a capital

which must be defended for a secure seat like New York or Philadelphia.

The sagacious Lincoln, whose action in army matters was paralyzed by

cliques, in the end saw through sham with an inspired clarity of vision,

and proposed the measure, but the backwoods Mazarin, Seward, prepared

such voluminous "considerations" in opposition that the good-natured

President withdrew his suggestion, and, as a consequence, the dismal

Ilium on the Potomac became the bone of a four years' contention, whose

vicissitudes exceed the incidents of the Iliad. Great armies, created by

an inspired commander, were wasted upon the defense of a capital that no

one would have lamented had it been again burned, and of which to-day

there is scarcely a remnant, save in the public buildings and the

topographical charts. A new race entered the sleepy city. The astute,

far-seeing Yankee divined the possibilities of the future, where the

indolent, sentimental Southerner had never taken thought of a nation's

growth and a people's pride! The thrifty and shifty patriots sent from

the North at once took a stake in the city, and thenceforward there was

growth, if not grace, in the capital.

Lincoln's Washington was to the capital of to-day what the Rome of Numa

was to the imperial city of Augustus. Never, in its best days, more

imposing than a wild Western metropolis of to-day, the sudden inrush of

armies and the wherewithal to supply and house them, soon gave the vast

spaces laid out for the capital the uncouthness and incompleteness of an

exaggerated mining town or series of towns. Contrasted even with its

rival on the James, Washington was raw, chaotic, squalid.

Long tenure of estates and little change in the people had given

Richmond the venerableness we associate with age. Many of her

picturesque seven hills were transformed into blooming fields or

umbrageous groves, under which vast villa-like edifices clustered in

Grecian repose. Save in the bustling main streets none of the edifices

were new or raw, or wholly unlovely in design or fabric. In Washington

nothing of this could be seen. Staring brick walls, buildings of unequal

height and fatiguingly ugly designs, uprose here and there in morasses

of mud that were meant for streets. Disproportionate outline, sharp

conjunctures of affluence and squalor, accented the disheartening

hideousness of the scene.

But upon this uncouth stage a great drama was going on; great figures

were in action; momentous events were hourly taking form and

consequence; men, and women at their best and worst were working out the

awful ends of Fate. In the large mansion yonder, the wisest, greatest,

simplest of mankind--by times Diogenes and Cromwell, Lafayette and

Robespierre was, in jest and joke, mirth and sadness, working out his

own and a people's sublime destiny. It was to this curiously unequal

personage that Mrs. Sprague, after fruitless pleading with her husband's

friends, came finally to secure action on behalf of her son. There was

little of the ceremonial needed to gain access to the Chief Magistrate

which is now the fashion.

She found a care-worn man, deeply harassed, standing in the low-ceiled

room, in which the Cabinet had met a few moments before. A sweet, wan

smile--the instinctive, inborn sensitiveness of a noble nature-flickered

over the rugged lines of the face as the usher, retiring, said:

"Mr. President, this is Mrs. Sprague, whom you ordered to be admitted."

"I am both glad and sorry to meet you, madam. I knew your husband, the

Senator, in other and happier times. I wish that it were in my power to

do for him or his what he was always doing for the unhappy or

distressed."

"Ah! how kind you are! How--"

She was going to say different from what she expected, but bethought

herself of the ungraciousness of this form, since at that time Mr.

Lincoln was the object of almost universal misreport and caricature.

"How can I say what a mother should say?"

While she spoke he began pacing the apartment, each time, as he came to

the double window near which she sat, peering out with a yearning,

far-away look toward the river and the red lines of the hills beyond it.

Then turning back, he strode the length of the long baize-covered table,

sometimes absently picking up a document, until, facing her again as she

narrated the story of Jack's misfortunes, he would fling it hastily on

the scattered heaps and fix his mild eye upon her.

"I know all this already, dear madam. It has come to me from the boy's

friends, and"--he hesitated a second--"and from his--or from those who

are not his friends."

"Not his friends?" the mother cried, half rising. "Why, Mr. President,

Jack hasn't an enemy in the world!"

"You came through from Richmond last week? Have you heard nothing from

your son since you saw him?"

"Nothing. Oh, is there anything about him?"

"You have not even read the newspapers, I see."

"No, no; I have been so uncertain, so agitated, so constantly in

attendance upon our members, that I have had no time to read or even

talk. But, pray tell me! Your manner indicates that something has

happened. O Mr. President, think of my anxiety! My only son!"

"Ah, Mrs. Sprague! It is I that should be pitied here. You came to me

for comfort. You came in reliance on my power to restore your son, and

I--I have the burden of telling you very grievous news. No, no, your son

is not dead, have no fear of that, if in the end it prove a comfort.

Last night your townsman, Elisha Boone, came to me with his heart-broken

daughter, demanding vengeance for his son's death, whom your boy had

slain the very night you left him on the James. He shot Captain Boone in

the house you visited, and defeated a well-arranged plan to capture the

rebel chief, Davis. Not only this, but he endangered the escape of a

number of sorely-worn prisoners who had succeeded in reaching the

Rosedale place and halted only to make Davis's capture certain."

"My son shot Wesley! oh no, no; it can not be; or, if he did, it was

because his own life was in peril. Ah! no, no, Mr. President, do not

believe this. I know my son. I know the misery he endured in Wesley's

company; endured like a hero; endured like a Sprague. He must have been

in peril of his life."

"Dear madam, I feel for you. I feel with you, but these facts are all in

the possession of the Secretary of War. Mr. Boone will no doubt give you

all the details. If it can be made to seem as you say, have no fear that

I will wink at mere revenge, or make the machinery of justice an

instrument of family feuds. Get your lawyer; have the matter

investigated, and rely upon me for every proper clemency and aid in your

hard lot."

She had arisen long before, and, recognizing this as a dismissal, she

bowed, unable to speak, and, with blinded eyes, staggered toward the two

steps leading upward from the room. She would have fallen had the ready

arm of the President not been near to support her. In the anteroom he

said, huskily:

"Captain, send an orderly to accompany this lady to her carriage."

Merry was in the carriage. One glance at Mrs. Sprague's face told that

dire news had been heard. She did not ask a question, but, embracing and

supporting the sobbing mother, awaited patiently for the dreaded

revelation. When at length the miserable story came in gaspings and

sobs, the spinster exhibited an unexpected firmness.

"I don't believe a word of it. If Jack shot Wesley, it was because he

was in some sort of treacherous business. You may depend upon it, that,

when we get the true story, Jack's part will prove him in the right. I

am going this instant to Boone to learn his source of information. He

can have nothing but rumors."

"I will go. It is better for me to see Mr. Boone. He will not venture to

misrepresent to me."

At Willards, where Boone was stopping, the ladies were obliged to wait a

long time, and, in the end, it was Kate who appeared before them in deep

black, with a half-yearning, half-defiant expression in the sadly worn

face. They would never have recognized her, and, as it was, Merry

started with a slight scream as the dark figure stopped before them.

"Papa begs to be excused. He supposes that you want to hear the

particulars of the--the affair at Rosedale, and bids me tell you."

"O Kate, Kate, it is not true! it can not be true. Oh, you who knew Jack

so well, you know that he never could have--have--"

Kate had seized a chair and drawn it before the two who sat on one of

the long sofas that filled without adorning the vast hotel parlor, dim

even at noonday in its semi-subterranean light.

"Yes, Mrs. Sprague, your son shot Wesley deliberately; shot him as

deliberately as if I should draw a pistol and take your life now

and here."

"And--and killed him?"

"He never spoke again. He--he--ah! I can not, I can not! We brought him

here. His body is in the cemetery, waiting the military formalities."

"But tell us how it happened, Kate," Merry sobbed, entreatingly. "We

know nothing but what you have told us. Tell us all. It is so startling,

so awful, that we can not comprehend such a thing happening where we

left everybody in the most friendly spirit."

Kate, struggling with her tears, told the story so far as she knew it,

but of course she knew little beyond the mere fact that Wesley had come

to his death in Mrs. Atterbury's room; that Jack stood over him with the

smoking pistol, and owned that he had fired in the darkness. She told

the tale as gently as might be, her own heart secretly pleading for

everything of extenuation that might lessen Jack's guilt, but she had

insensibly taken the darker view her father had instantly adopted, that

Jack's enmity had led him to seize the chance to rid himself of a rival

and enemy under cover of defending the Atterburys. She did not hint this

to the mother, but Merry, knowing Boone, at once saw what the

President's words meant. Boone had charged Jack with deliberate murder.

Dreading the realization of this by Mrs. Sprague at this time, Merry

made a sign to Kate, who, comprehending at once, arose and begged to go

back to her father, who was in need of her.

"Oh, if Olympia were here! she has so much self-control! she would

advise so well what should he done!" the mother moaned, as she passed

down through the long, barrack-like parlor.

"But, dear Mrs. Sprague, Olympia is just where her good sense is most

needed. She is near Jack. He needs comfort and counsel. You can have

your lawyer, and you shall see the case isn't so bad as we have heard.

You must remember that the Boones are not likely to take an impartial

view. It is only human nature that they should think the worst of

the--the death of son and brother. Wait till we hear Jack's story, and

you will see that it puts a different face on the matter."

"But it's Jack's disgrace and death they want. That was what the

President meant. I didn't understand it then: I do understand it now.

They shall not murder him! I shall command him to remain in Richmond. I

shall command him to join Vincent. The North is unworthy of such men as

my son. He is too pure, too innocent, too high-minded to be understood

by the coarse natures that have come to power in the country. I shall

not let this odious Boone destroy him as he ruined your brother."

"O Mrs. Sprague, think what you are saying! Think how fatal such words

would be, if Jack were brought to trial. You see every day in the press

how all are suspected of treason who were Democrats in the old days. I

know very well that you do not mean this. Much as I love Jack, I would

rather see him in his grave with the Union flag over him than in the

rebel lines, a soldier of that bad cause. As to my poor brother, Boone

was only an accident in his ruin. If it had not been Boone, it would

have been some one else. Put the whole matter in the hands of Simon

Brodie. He is almost a Sprague. He will see that the son of his old

patron has justice."

Simon Brodie, of Warchester, was the chief advocate of the three

counties. He had studied law with the late Senator Sprague, and, at his

death, from partner succeeded to his lucrative law practice. He came at

once to Washington at Mrs. Sprague's summons, and set about learning the

status of the case. The affair was no easy matter to trace, but, after

inconceivable delays and persistent misleading, he found that Jack was

in the military archives charged with desertion, murder, and treason:

desertion in quitting his company and regiment without orders, treason

in consorting with armed rebels, and murder in joining with the enemies

of the country to take the life of his commanding officer. Meanwhile,

Mrs. Sprague and Merry had returned to Acredale, and the lawyer sent

letters to Richmond setting forth the case to Jack--letters which, by

some mysterious jugglery, never reached their address, as we have seen.

Nothing could be done until Jack was either exchanged or until his

advocate had made out a documentary case that could be presented to the

military authorities. As he surmised, every one in authority had been

prejudiced against Jack. The Congressman from Warchester dared not work

against Boone, who was potent as a Cabinet minister in the councils of

the Government. One of Senator Sprague's old friends, still in the

Senate, advised Brodie to let Jack remain at Richmond till the peace

came, "for," said he, "no Democrat nor any one identified with that

party can hope for impartial justice here."

"But what am I to do? I can get no assistance here. Every bureau

containing documents bearing on the poor boy's case is either closed to

me, or the officials so hostile that I can not work with or

through them."

"You must go about the affair as if it were a State matter. You must go

to McClellan. He is a young man of the most spotless honor, the most

generous sympathies. He is as rigid as a Prussian in discipline, but his

methods are enlightened and above board. He is the only man in authority

that has any real conception of the magnitude of the struggle the North

has entered upon. He is, however, miserably hampered. The new rulers

have come down to Washington very much in the spirit of the Goths when

they captured Rome. Every one is on the make. The contract system is

something beyond the wildest excesses I ever read of in pillage and

chicanery. Shoes by the million have been accepted that melt as soon as

they are wet; garments are stacked mountain-high in the storehouses that

blow into rags so soon as the air goes through them. Food, moldy,

filthy, is accumulated on the wharves of Washington, Baltimore, and

Alexandria that would be forbidden as infectious in any carefully

guarded port in the world. Contracts for vessels have been signed where

steamships are called for, and the contractor sends canal-boats. Lines

of ships are paid for to run to ports not known in navigation; and the

chief men in the great departments share the money with the rings--"

"But why don't you expose it?"

"Expose it? A word in the Senate against these villainies is set down as

disloyalty. All that a rascal needs to gain any scope he pleases, is to

say 'rebel sympathizer,' and Fort Warren or Lafayette is held up as

a menace."

Among the confidential aides of McClellan Brodie knew intimately a young

officer, the son of a distinguished lady, whose writings delighted

cultivated people fifty years ago. This young man, Captain Churchland,

had often been a guest at the Spragues, and to him Brodie went for

advice. Inheriting a great deal of his mother's intellect, with a droll

sense of humor, not then so well understood as the lighter school of

writers have since made it, Churchland was the delight of the

headquarters. He listened to the melancholy story of Jack's

compromising plight.

"It's a bad fix--no mistake," he said, gravely; "but I suggest that your

fiery young friend come home and shoot the father, marry the daughter,

and, as a wife can't testify against the husband, your client

is secure."

"Ah, captain, it's not a matter for joking. Think of his wretched

mother."

"That's just what I do think of--murder's no joke, though it's more of a

fine art than it was when De Quincey wrote. I'm perfectly serious. I

would shoot the scoundrel Boone. Why, do you know the man has cleared a

million dollars on rotten blankets since he came here? McClellan ordered

a report made out showing his rascalities a few weeks ago. It was

disapproved at the War Office, and the condemned blankets have gone to

Halleck's army. Doesn't that deserve shooting? Napoleon directed all the

army contractors to be hanged. I say shoot them. For every one put out

of the way a thousand soldiers' lives will be saved."

"Well, well, let Boone go. It's Sprague I'm interested in."

"So am I. It is Sprague that Boone seems to be interested in, too, for

he has filled the new Secretary with, what he himself would call,

righteous wrath against the poor boy and his friends. But make your mind

easy. The exchange of prisoners will soon begin. Sprague's turn will

come among the first, and then I will keep track of the affair. Beyond

that I can promise nothing. You may be sure, so far as purely military

men have to do with the business, there will be impartial justice. When

the politicians take hold, I can give no assurance."

And with this cold comfort the disheartened lawyer betook himself to

Acredale, where his report, guardedly given, brought no very strong hope

to the anxious mother.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE WORLD WENT VERY ILL THEN.

Acredale was not the sleepy, sylvan scene we first saw it, when Mrs.

Sprague and Merry drove through the wide main street from the station,

four months after they had quitted it in search of their soldier boys.

The stately elms still arched the highway to Warchester, but here and

there rough gaps were seen in the trim hedge-rows. Staring new edifices

jutted through these breaks upon the grassy walks, and building material

lay heaped in confusion all along the graveled walks. Merry railed at

these evidences of commercial invasion, wondering who had come to the

village to transform it into city hideousness. Mrs. Sprague did not give

much heed to her companion's speculations. Her mind was far away on the

James, wondering where her boy was. It was very hard to settle down to

the commonplaces of home life; but, even in all her distraction, Mrs.

Sprague saw that a change had come upon the people as well as the place.

With the war and its desolating sights fresh in her memory, she saw,

with sorrow and aversion, that social life was gayer than it had ever

been, that the rush for wealth had become a fever, and that the simple

ways and homely joys of the past were now remitted to the very elderly.

The story of Dick's mad pursuit of Jack and the Caribees, after the

disaster at Bull Run, was soon known in every home in the county.

Friends came from far and near to hear the exciting adventure; and the

younger boys, who had been the lad's classmates in the academy, at once

made up a company of youngsters, adorned by the name of the "Perley

Rangers," to be in readiness for the hero's command when he

should return.

The feud between the adherents of the houses of Sprague and Boone had

become acrimoniously embittered by the point of view from which each

side saw the conduct of Jack. Among the Boone feudatories he was set

down as a traitor, a spy, a murderer. The first malignant rumors that

reached the village after the battle were still maintained stoutly by

the Boone lictors. Jack had ingloriously shirked his part in the battle

with the Caribees; he had skulked in the bushes until the issue was

decided, and then had followed the sympathies of his secession family;

he had gone to the Atterburys, well known for their hatred to the North.

It was to prove his sincerity in the Southern cause that he had wormed

himself into the confidence of Wesley Boone's comrades, and in order

that he might be chief agent in the frustration of the plan of escape.

He had won high regard in the Confederacy by saving Davis from capture.

He had, with his own hand, shot Wesley Boone when the plan of capture

was on the verge of success. Could anything be clearer than his odious

treason? Hadn't he, of all the unfortunates of the battle, found favor

and luxurious quarters in Richmond? Hadn't he cunningly cajoled the

Boones into the visit to the rebel household, in order to wrest the

secrets of the Union rescue from them? It was in vain that the Perleys

and others set forth the real case. "Very likely, indeed," the Boone

side cried, "that rebels like the Atterburys would receive true

Unionists into their house, and treat them as friends! A real Unionist

would have refused hospitality from the enemies of his country." There

was talk among the more zealous patriots of having the Sprague family

expelled from Acredale. Loyal zealots looked up the law on expatriation

and attainder, and complained bitterly that no applicable provisions

were found in the statutes. Stirring addresses were sent to the member

from Warchester, imploring him to have laws enacted that would enable

the patriots to deal summarily with covert treason. It was true that the

Spragues had contributed many thousand dollars toward the equipment of

the Caribees, had endowed twenty beds in one of the city hospitals for

the wounded--but this was when Jack expected high command in the

regiment. Failing in that ignoble self-seeking, he had gone where his

heart was, while the family, to retain their property, remained among

the loyal, to insult their woe and gloat over their misfortunes.

At a great "war meeting" in the town-hall, over which Boone presided,

one thrilling orator hinted that fire, if not the law, could "relieve a

loyal community of the Copperhead's nest!" "It was an insult, as well as

a menace, to have the patrician palace of disloyalty flaunting its

grandeurs among a people loyal and devoted, whose sons and brothers were

battling for the Union. Every rebel sympathizer driven from the North

would strengthen the Union cause; ashes and salt sowed on the ground

their insolent homes had desecrated, would be a holy reminder to the

loyal, a warning to the secret foes of the Union."

There were loud expressions of approval, and a solemn "Amen" to this

intrepid plan of campaign. Lawyer Brodie, who was present, arose under a

thunder of discordant notes--"Copperhead!" "Traitor!" "Dough-face!" "We

don't want to hear from rebel sympathizers! Out with him!" and other

more opprobrious taunts. Now, Brodie was Boone's counsel, and had been

identified with him in some very difficult litigation. It would not do

to have him discredited. The chairman rapped loudly for order.

"I can vouch, my friends, for Mr. Brodie's patriotism. He is a Democrat,

it is true; but he loves the Union. I know that to be a fact. You can do

the Union no better service than listening to what he has to say."

Brodie, who had held his place, calmly smiled as Boone sat down, and,

surveying the audience from side to side, began:

"Free speech was one of the cries that aroused the North in the late

campaign, I believe in free speech. I have done my share toward securing

it, but I never was refused it before. I look among the men here and see

among you neighbors whom I have known since boyhood, neighbors who have

known me since boyhood, and when I arise here to take a citizen's part,

in a meeting called to aid and comfort the cause of the Union, I am

permitted to speak only by the personal request of one man. If that is

your idea of free speech, if that is your notion of aiding the Union

cause, and strengthening the hands of the Administration, I don't need

to be in the confidence of the rebel authorities to tell you that they

could ask no more powerful allies than you! [Sensation.]

"There are three hundred men in this hall. The light is good, and my

eyesight is not impaired; but I can not see a man among you who was not

a Democrat a year or two ago. There are not fifty men among you that

voted for Abraham Lincoln. [Murmurs.] Are the two hundred and fifty,

then, traitors? Are they rebel sympathizers? Are they Copperheads? One

thousand men marched under the Caribee flag; not a man of them voted for

Lincoln. Are they Copperheads? This township, by its vote at the last

election, was five to one Democratic. Is this a Copperhead community?

Nearly a half million dollars have been subscribed for bounties and war

measures; the tax-payers, almost to a man, are Democrats. Is it

possible, then, that the Copperheads are supplying the money to carry on

the war? You propose to burn the mansion of my old partner, Senator

Sprague! Why? Because his estate has given more to the Union cause than

any other family in the township?"

"The son has gone over to the rebels," a voice cried.

"Thank you. There--I'm glad you have given me the chance to crush that

cowardly calumny--the invention of some envious malefactor. Jack Sprague

has gone over to the rebels, just as Anderson and his men went over at

Sumter; just as fifteen hundred of his comrades went over at Bull Run;

just as some of our sons and brothers here in Acredale went over; just

as my friend, Boone's son, went over--because he was surrounded

and wounded."

"Stop a moment, if you please, friend Brodie; I protest against your

making anything in common between my son and this young man. The matter

is to be investigated, and then we can tell better."

Boone spoke in great excitement, and the audience, now feverishly

wrought up, urged the lawyer to say his say out. He continued in the

trained, impassive tones of the advocate:

"Every one in this room knows the two young men. It would be waste of

time for me to strive to make anything in common between John Sprague

and Wesley Boone. Here, where they both grew up, that is quite

unnecessary."

"I--I--referred to their conduct as soldiers," Boone cried, hoarsely.

"My son lost his life in the service of his country. I can't have his

name coupled with a--murderer's--with a traitor's."

"Ah, my friend, when hate draws your portrait it is bound to be black.

When prejudice holds the pen, your virtues stand in the shade of vice. I

will tell John Sprague's story from the day he quit Acredale to the

unhappy hour his comrade was killed in the dark, in the sleeping-room of

the mother and daughter who had nursed him from the very jaws of death.

He was in that house by his father's urgent request, though it would

have needed none to open its doors to any one in want of succor. Nor,"

he added, significantly, "can it be told who killed Wesley Boone until

all the shots fired in Mrs. Atterbury's chamber are accounted for."

Then he narrated rapidly, but tellingly, the substance of what has been

already set down in this history--the facts taken from Jack's letters

and attested by the corroboration of Barney, Dick, and the company's

officers. There was a visible revulsion in the larger part of the

audience as the tale went on; and when the lawyer wound up with the

story of Mrs. Sprague's baffled efforts in Washington to have her boy

brought North, there was an outburst of applause and a faint cheer from

the younger men for "glorious old Jack."

The factions shifted a good deal after this official rendering of the

affair. There was no longer any talk of burning the Sprague property,

and opinion was about evenly divided as to Jack's conduct. December had

come, and the township was busy packing boxes to send to the army. No

news had come North from Richmond. Active movements were looked for

every day, and in the momentous expectation such lesser incidents as

exchange were forgotten or ignored. The daily journals were filled with

details of contemplated expeditions, and one morning Mrs. Sprague read

with beating heart this paragraph in the _Herald_:

"A score or more of the men who escaped from the Richmond prison a few

weeks ago, arrived at Washington to-day from Fort Monroe. The party

endured untold privations in the swamps between Williamsburg and our

line on the Warwick, but all came in safely, except two men who died

from the results of their wounds. The expedition was planned and carried

out by an agent of General Butler, who has been in Virginia since the

unfortunate attempt to rescue Captain Boone of the 'Caribee' regiment.

At the moment the party reached the Union outpost, one of the most

daring of the Union men, Sergeant Jacques of the Caribees, was, it is

thought, mortally wounded."

Merry, too, had seen the story, and came over to show it to Mrs.

Sprague.

"I have seen it, I have seen it. Who of the Caribees can these be? Who

is Jacques? I never heard that name here."

"Ah! he must be one of the town recruits. It's a French name."

"Yes, it is part of a rather famous French name," Mrs. Sprague replied,

half smiling at Merry's innocence. "Something must be done to get into

communication with these escaped men. Some of them must have seen Jack.

If there are Caribees among them, you may be sure they have messages

from our boys. I think I shall set out for Washington, or ask Mr.

Brodie to go."

"That's better. Mr. Brodie can get at the men and you couldn't. I shall

be in a fever until we have heard from them."

Brodie agreed with the ladies when, later, they discussed the matter

with him, and that evening he set out for Washington. Mrs. Sprague at

the tea-table with Merry, who made it a point to give the lonely mother

as much of her time as she could spare, was still pondering the

paragraph when the sound of carriage-wheels came in through the closed

curtains. Then the front door opened without knocking, and there was a

rustle in the hallway, and then, with a simultaneous scream, three

agitated females, to wit, Mrs. Sprague, Merry, and Olympia, in a

confused mass.

"O my child! my child!"

"Mamma!"

"Dearest, dearest Olympia," Merry splutters, wildly embracing both.

"Oh, how delightful to be here, to see you, mamma as peaceful and serene

as in the old days! I thought I should never get home. I left Richmond

three weeks ago. I was held at Fredericksburg for ten days. Then I had

to turn back when we got to Manassas, through some red tape lacking

there. But here I am. Here I am at home--ugh!--I shall never quit it

again--never."

"But, my child. Tell us--Jack!"

"Jack? Haven't you heard from him? He escaped three weeks ago. It was he

who got the men out of the prison. Dick was with him. Surely you have

heard of that?" and Olympia sank into the nearest chair, all the gayety

gone from her face, her eyes questioning the two wretched women. Neither

could for the moment control her agitation; neither was capable of

thinking. All that was in their minds was this dire specter of a month's

silence. Alive, Jack or Dick would have found means to relieve

their anxiety.

"Surely you heard that a party had escaped from Libby and made their way

to Fort Monroe?" Olympia cried, desperately.

"Fort Monroe?" Mrs. Sprague echoed mechanically. "Yes, ah, yes. Merry,

where's the paper?"

Olympia devoured the meager scrap and then dropped the journal on her

knees. Her mind was in a whirl. In Richmond the escape had been

announced, then the news that the party had been surrounded in the

swamp, then day by day details of the taking of straggling negroes and

one or two soldiers, but no name that even resembled Jack's. The

Atterburys, after the first painful sensation, had given their approval

of Jack's going, and used all means in their power to get such facts as

would comfort Olympia. They assured her that Jack had reached the Union

lines, and then she had set out northward, expecting to find him at home

or in communication with his family. No word from Dick? No word from

Jack? They were dead, and she--she had urged them to the mad adventure!

She had given Jack no peace, had fired Dick to the fatal enterprise. She

dared not look in the tearless eyes of her mother. She dared not face

the ghastly questioning in Merry's meek eye. Brodie had gone down to see

the escaped men. Perhaps he would discover something. This was the small

comfort left the three when, near midnight, they ended the woful

conference.

The next day Olympia was visited by a representative of the _Crossbow_,

the chief journal of Warchester, and urged to write a narrative of her

adventures in the rebel capital. Until her friends made her see how much

effect it would have in clearing Jack's reputation she shrank from the

publicity, but with that end in view--Jack's honor--she wrote, and wrote

with strength and clearness, the moving incidents of her brother's

capture, captivity, and escape--or his bold effort to escape. This she

told so simply, so directly, so vividly, that the truth of it at once,

struck the most prejudiced reader, who had no cause to continue in his

prepossession. After the publication in the Warchester paper scores who

had sided with the Boone faction either called or wrote to confess their

error. Even the Acredale _Monitor_, a weekly sheet notoriously in the

interest of Boone, felt constrained to copy parts of the account and

publish with it a shambling retraction of previous criticism, based on

imperfect knowledge, that it had printed concerning Sergeant Sprague.

"Death," it declared, "has obliterated all feeling that existed against

our young townsman, whose conduct, though open to grievous doubt in the

early part of his military career has been amply atoned for in the

intrepid enterprise in which he seems to have lost his life."

CHAPTER XXIX.

A WOMAN'S REASON.

The still, small voice that makes itself a force in the heart, which the

poets call our mentor and the moralists conscience, had been painfully

garrulous in Kate Boone's breast since the angry parting with Jack at

Rosedale. At first, in the wild grief of Wesley's death, she had hugged

hatred of Jack to her heart as a sublime revenge for the murder. But

with the hot partisanship allayed in the long weeks of reflection

preceding the rumor of Jack's own death, she began dimly to admit of

palliation in her lover's fatal act. Her father, the Boone faction, all

who had access to her, held the shooting to be a craftily planned

murder, calculated to bring advantage to the assassin. To check the

sacrilegious love she felt in her heart, she too had been forced to

believe, to admit the worst. But when the image of Jack came to her

mind, as it did day and night, it was as the gay, frank, chivalrous

Hotspur, as unlike a murderer as Golgotha to Hesperides. She had never

dared to confide to her father that vows had been exchanged between,

them--that they were, in fact, affianced lovers. He, never suspecting,

talked with her day after day of the signal vengeance in store for the

miscreant; how he had enlisted the aid of the most powerful in

Washington; how he had instructed the emissaries sent to Richmond to

effect Wesley's release, to direct all their energies to entrapping the

murderer into the ranks of the escaping prisoners.

She had often been startled by her father's far-seeing, malignantly

planned vengeances, and, now that the rumor of Jack's death began to

settle into belief, she was appalled by a sudden sense of complicity in

a murderous plot. Not that she believed her father capable of murder or

its procuration, but, knowing his potency with the authorities, she saw

that there were many ways in which Jack might be sacrificed in the

natural course of military duties. She had heard things of the sort

discussed--how inconvenient men had been sent into pitfalls and never

heard of again.

She began dimly to see that, at worst, Jack's act was not the calculated

murder her father held it to be. In her own tortured mind there had been

at first but one clear process of reasoning. That process, whenever she

began to gather the shreds, had led her mind straight to the conviction

that Jack's shot had been premeditated, that the chance had been

prearranged with the enemies of her brother. At first her only distinct

thought was that the hapless Wesley had been lured to his death. The

hand of the man she loved had sent the fatal shot into the poor boy's

body. Had it been in self-defense--even in the heat of uncontrollable

anger--she could have found mitigation for Jack; but there was neither

the justification of self-defense nor the plausible pretext of anger.

One word of warning, which Jack could have spoken, would have saved

Wesley from the rash, the dastardly attempt upon the Rosedale household.

The plot, in all its details, must have been known to Jack or Dick, else

how explain their presence in the chamber, armed and ready for

the murder?

It had been a conspiracy of delusive kindness from the day Wesley

entered Rosedale. The frankness and kindliness of the Atterburys had

been assumed to lure him to his fatal adventure. Boone himself believed

that Jack's ignoble ambition and envy had been the main motives in the

murder. To this Kate, from the first, opposed a resolute incredulity.

"You don't know the fellow, I tell you," Boone doggedly argued. "He's as

like his father as two snakes in a hole. Old man Sprague never let a man

stand in his way. Jack's the same. He thought Wes' kept him from the

shoulder-straps, and he got him out of the way. Wasn't he always

snooping 'round in the regiment trying to undermine your brother? Wasn't

he always trying to be popular? Ah, I know the Spragues. But I'll give

them a wrench that'll twist their damned pride out of them. I'll have

that cold-blooded young villain shot in a hollow square, and I'll have

it done in this very district, that the whole county may know the

disgrace of the high and mighty Spragues."

"No, father." Kate had heard all this before, but she, for the first

time, resolved upon setting her father right. "No, Jack hasn't a

particle of the feeling you ascribe to him. I don't think he liked poor

Wesley. They were totally unlike in nature, and I think that Jack felt

deeply that he had been wronged by Wesley's appointment. But it was not

in his nature to seek revenge. He would have fought Wesley openly, but

he would never be one of a gang of murderers. I think I can see how Jack

was led into the part he played. It does not lessen the guilt, but it

relieves him of the odious suspicions I first felt."

Then Boone, in irritable impatience, reminded her of her own earlier

utterances; how from his first coming Wesley had been treated with

studied distrust; how he had been denied the boyish intimacy that

existed between Jack and Dick; how he was insensibly made to feel that

he was in the house under a different cartel from that of Jack and Dick;

that he was a prisoner on parole, and his word was doubted. Nothing

could make him believe, he declared, getting up moodily, but that the

whole lot of them had set out to drive Wesley into a corner and then

kill him, as they had done.

Kate sighed wearily as her father left the room. If she could only be as

well assured as her strong words implied! Ah! if she could fetch back

her lover by getting at the truth, how willingly she would fly to

Rosedale and learn all! But she dared not question, lest questioning

should confirm, where she now at least had the miserable solace of

doubt. Could it be true? Could Jack be the base schemer her father

depicted him? Then her mind ran back to Rosedale. She lived again all

the enchanting days of that earthly paradise. She saw Wesley's furtive

starts, his strange disappearances, his growing melancholy, his moody

reticence when she questioned him. Ah! if he had but confided to her! If

she had but dreamed of the desperate purpose born of the loneliness he

lived in! If Jack had been loyal to him, loyal to her, Wesley would have

been warned that eager eyes were upon him, ready wits reading his

purposes, and revengeful hatred ready to slaughter him.

When the news came that Jack had lost his life in the very enterprise

Wesley had contemplated, Kate collapsed under the shock. Now, when it

was too late, she convinced herself that he was innocent. If she could

have recalled him to life, she cried in self-reproach, she would not ask

whether he was all her first impulse had painted him. She had borne up

with something like composure when Wesley's death came upon her; but

now, tortured by a sense of responsibility in Jack's fate, she gave way

to the grief she had so long repressed. If she had not upbraided him, if

she had not accused him, in so many words, of murder, he would never

have embarked on the mad plot of escape.

She had driven him to his death. She had sat silent while Acredale rang

with calumnies against him. It was not too late yet to make reparation.

She would proclaim publicly that her brother had rashly courted his own

death; that Jack had unknowingly shot him down, as many a man does, in

battle, shoot his best friend. She resolved on the instant to go to the

stricken family and make such expiation there as was in her power. But

was there any certainty that the report of Jack's death was true?

Grievous mistakes of the same sort had been made repeatedly in the

public journals. She was not able to formulate any plan at first. Her

father was more morose than ever. He seemed in his way to deplore the

young man's death, but not in pity, as she soon learned. Death had

robbed him of a cruelly meditated revenge. She wisely made no comment

when this brutal feeling betrayed itself; but for the first time in her

life the girl shuddered at the sight of her father. The vague rumors of

years, that had been whispered about him--rumors which of old had fired

her soul with hot indignation, came back insidiously. She shuddered. Was

she to lose all--brother, lover, father--in this unnatural strife? She

had been so loyal to her father. She had been so proud of him when

others reviled. She had felt so serenely confident of the nobleness of

his heart, the generosity of his impulses. She had always been able to

mold him, as she thought. Could it be possible that he was human to her,

inhuman to the rest of the world? Then her mind, tortured by newly

awakened doubts, ran back over the events leading to the rupture with

the Spragues. She groaned at the retrospect. It was injustice that had

displaced Jack in the command of the company. It was injustice that had

marked her father's conduct in the Perley feud.

Grief is a logician of very direct methods. Its clarifying processes

work like light in darkness. Kate saw the past in her father's conduct

with terrifying vividness. She realized that it was her father's harsh

purpose that had arrayed Acredale against him. It was his pride and

arrogant obstinacy that had brought about the loss of all she loved. The

fates had immolated the helpless; were the fates preparing a still

bitterer expiation? Life had very little left for her now, but she

resolved that she would no longer be isolated by her father's enmities.

The great house had been gloomy enough for father and daughter during

the last miserable months, but he still fled to her for comfort. It was

one evening when he came in, apparently in better spirits than he had

shown since Wesley's death, that she told him what had been filling her

mind since Jack's death.

"O father, I think I see that our lives have been unworthy, if not

altogether wrong. Surely such neighbors as ours could not all take sides

against you, if you were in the right in all the feuds that have divided

us as a family from the people of Acredale."

Then, in an almost imploring tone of reproach, she retraced the harsh

episodes in the father's dealings with the Perleys, with the community,

and, finally, the quarrel with the Spragues, involving in it the lives

of Wesley and Jack. Her voice softened into tremulousness. She arose,

and in her old pleading way pulled the shaggy head down on her breast,

pressing her lips on the high, bare forehead.

"Dear father, all this is unchristian; you have in reality been waging

war against women and children. Jack was a mere boy, Richard is a boy. I

don't go into other enmities, where you have used the enormous power of

wealth to crush the helpless. If you had not alienated the Spragues and

encouraged Wesley in overbearing Jack, my brother would be alive to-day.

My sweetheart--yes, Jack was dearer than all the world to me--he would

not be dead to-day. Ah! father, father, what good comes of anger--what

joy of revenge? You have brought about the death of these two boys. Is

it not time to look at life with a new heart--with clear-seeing eyes?"

Elisha Boone sat quite still. He had listened at first with a flush of

anger, which deepened as the girl pleaded, until it died away and left

his face very pale. He pushed himself away from the clinging figure, as

if the better to see her face. Then his head drooped. He sighed heavily,

rose and without a word left the room. Kate heard him ascending the

stairs, then the sound of his room door softly closing. Had the hateful

fires of vengeance been quenched? It was her father's way, when

resolutely opposed, to quit the scene and without confessing himself in

the wrong, do as Kate urged. The next morning he was gone before she

reached the breakfast-table. There was a note on her plate in his

handwriting. She read with a sinking heart:

"MY DAUGHTER: If what you said last night is true, you

can not be the daughter to me that you have been. I am

going to Washington, and when I come back you will know

that your brother was deliberately murdered, and that his

murderer, even in the grave, is held guilty before all men

of the crime."

The servant confirmed the tidings. Her father had arisen early and

departed on the first train. What could it mean? Had he some evidence

that she had not heard? Had Jack left papers incriminating him? Ah! why

carry the hideous feud further? Why blast the melancholy repose of the

living, by fastening this stain upon the dead? But they could not. She

knew it. She could herself refute any proof brought forward. She would

tell all. She would reveal their tender relationship, and surely then

any one, knowing the young man's nature, would scout the assertion of

his willfully shooting Wesley. But surely Olympia and Mrs. Sprague must

be able to tell, and tell decisively, the circumstances in the tragedy.

She would go to them. She owed this to the living; she owed it still

more imperatively to the dead. She had not seen Olympia since her

return. Mrs. Sprague had been too infirm to see her when she called. But

she would not heed rebuffs now. In such a cause, on such a mission, she

would have stood at the Sprague door a suppliant until even the

obstinacy of her father would have relented. On her way across the

square she saw Merry coming from the post. She turned out of her way,

and hurrying to the near-sighted spinster held out her hand,

saying, softly:

"Ah, Miss Merry, I'm so glad to see you! I have been meaning to call on

you ever since I heard of your return, but, what with sorrow and

illness, I have put it off, and now I want you to take me home with you.

Will you not?"

The pleading tone, the caressing clasp of the hand, the sadly changed

face, the somber black weeds, made the voice and figure so much unlike

the old Kate, that Merry stood for an instant confused and blushing as

she stammered:

"Bless me, Miss Kate, I--I--shouldn't have known you. Ah, I am very glad

to see you; sisters will be very glad to see you, too. Do, do come right

along with me. I'm afraid the parlor won't be very sightly, but you

won't mind, will you?"

Kate squeezed the hand still resting in her own, and drawing the long

veil back over face, she walked silently with the puzzled spinster,

unable to broach the theme she had at heart. Merry spared her the

torture of going at it obliquely.

"I have just been at the Spragues. Poor dears, they are in dreadful

distress. Mrs. Sprague is preparing to go in search of the body, but

Olympia won't give in that Jack is killed. She says that if he had been

she certainly would have known it in Richmond, for there are couriers

twice a day from the rebel outposts to the capital; that the Atterburys

had taken special measures to learn the fate of the escaped prisoners;

that, besides this, several young men in Richmond, who knew Jack well,

had been sent down the peninsula with the prisoners, to befriend him in

case he were retaken."

"And Olympia believes that Jack is alive?"

"Yes, firmly."

"Where does she think he is?"

"She believes that he is among a squad separated from the rest of the

prisoners, near the Union lines. It was asserted in Richmond that many

had crossed the James River, and were making for the Dismal Swamp, or

into Burnside's lines in North Carolina."

"Dear Miss Merry, I--I--think I won't go in now," Kate said,

tremblingly. "I must see Olympia. Perhaps I can help them in the search

for Jack, and you know there is no time to lose. I shall come and see

you all soon."

She squeezed the astonished Merry's hand, convulsively, and shot off,

leaving the bewildered lady quite speechless, so speechless that, when

she reached the stately presence of Aunt Pliny, she forgot the

commissions she had been sent to execute, and was at once reviled by the

parrot as "a no-account dawdler."

Meanwhile, Kate, with wild, throbbing hope in her heart that kindled

color in her pale cheeks and light in her weary eyes, sped away to the

Spragues. There was no tremor in the hand that raised the dragon-headed

knocker, nor hesitancy in the voice that bade the servant say that "Miss

Boone requested a few moments' conversation with Miss Sprague."

Olympia came presently into the reception-room, and the girls met with a

warm embrace.

"Ah, Olympia, I have been made so--so--glad by what Merry tells me!

You--do--not believe that your brother is dead?" Her voice faltered, and

Olympia, gazing at her fixedly, said:

"No, I shall not believe Jack is dead until I see his body. Poor mother,

who believes the worst whenever we are out of her sight, has given up

all but the faintest hope. I shall not. I know Jack so well. I know that

it would take a good deal to kill him, young and strong as he is.

Besides that, I know that the Atterburys would find means to let us

know, if there were any certainty as to his fate. Poor Jack! It would be

an unendurable calamity if he were to die before the monstrous calumnies

that have been published about him are proved lies."

"Dear Olympia, that is one reason of my coming. In my horror at

Rosedale, I, too, believed that John had been in a plot to entrap

Wesley; but I--I--know better now, and I have come to tell you that it

is no less my duty than my right to see that your brother's memory is

made as spotless as his life."

"I knew it; I knew you would, do it; I told Jack so in Richmond, almost

the last words I said before he set out on this miserable adventure. I

told him you were not the girl I took you for if you could believe him

to be such a dastard, when you had time to get over the shock of poor

Wesley's death. You never heard the whole story of that dreadful night.

I must tell it to you--as he would if he were here, and I know you would

believe him." The two girls sat down, hand in hand, and Olympia told

the tale as it has been set down in these pages.

Kate was sobbing when the story ended. She flung her arms about

Olympia's neck, and for a time the two sat silent, tearful.

"Oh, why didn't he tell me this at the time? It was not Jack's bullet

that entered poor Wesley's body. Jack was at his right, at the side of

the bed. Wesley's wound was on the left side, and the shot must have

come from Jones's pistol!"

"I remember that; but Jack's remorse put all thought of everything else

out of my head. I recall, perfectly, that the wound was in Wesley's left

side. Oh, if I could only get that word to Jack! I If--"

"I'll get it to him if he's alive. I, or mine, have been his undoing! I

shall make amends. Ah, Olympia, I--I am ashamed to feel so full of

joy--forgive me."

"It isn't your fault, dear, that you didn't know Jack as we do," Olympia

said, tenderly.

"What are your plans?" Kate asked, presently.

"Mother insists upon going to the peninsula and examining the ground,

questioning all who took part in the pursuit, and seeing with her own

eyes every wounded man in the neighborhood. I don't know whether we can

get passes, but we shall set out at once and do our best."

"O Olympia. I must--I must go with you! I shall die if I remain here

doing nothing--helpless! Let me go. I can aid you much. I can surely get

all the passports required. I can do many things that you couldn't do,

for my father--"

She stopped and colored. Her father! What was she rashly promising for

him? Dead, he was bent on Jack's dishonor; living, he would never rest

until Jack's life was condemned.

"Ah, yes--that's true. Your father is potent at headquarters. I can

answer for mamma. We shall be delighted and comforted to have you. I

shall need you as much as mamma needs me. We are only waiting for Mr.

Brodie's report. I don't expect much from his researches. It is only a

woman's heart that upholds one in such trials as this search means."

The plans were agreed upon at once and the two girls separated, knit

together by the same bond in more senses than one, for, while Olympia

set out to rescue her brother, she secretly hoped that the search would

bring her near some one else; and so, as soon as Kate had gone, she sat

down and wrote Vincent of Jack's disappearance, asking his aid in

finding such traces as might be in the rebel lines. She merely alluded

to their projected plan, adding, in a postscript, that she would write

him as soon as the party approached the outposts. Kate wrote at once to

her father, at his Washington address, narrating her visit to the

Spragues, telling him of the new hope that had come to her, and

beseeching him to lend his whole heart to the distressed mother and

sister. He should see her in Washington within a few days, and she

counted on his sympathy with her to help to restore the lost son and

brother if alive, to co-operate in giving the body honorable burial if

he were dead. These letters dispatched, the party waited only to hear

from Brodie. He came a day or two later, but he could give them no hope.

He had been repelled from all sources of information, insulted in the

War Office, and denied access to the President. He was convinced that

there were secret influences at work to obscure the true facts in the

case of the escaped prisoners, but what the agencies were he could not

guess. When Olympia told this to Kate, she was surprised at her look

and response.

"I know the influences, I think, and I can discover the agencies. Take

comfort. I believe Jack is alive. I promise you that I shall never rest

until he is found, alive or dead."

"O Kate, what an impulsive ally we have gained! I wish Jack could have

heard that speech; it would have put power in his arm, as poor Barney

used to say."

Twenty-four hours later the three women were in Washington, Kate

remaining with her friends, instead of joining her father at Willard's.

CHAPTER XXX.

A GAME OF CHANCE.

It was the end of January, 1862, when Olympia and her mother found

themselves in Washington for the second time in quest of the missing

soldier. They took lodgings in the same quiet house, not far from

Lafayette Square--Kate with them. Kate counted upon her father's aid,

active or passive; but when her messenger returned from Willard's with

word that Mr. Boone had gone from the hotel several days before, she was

numb with a dreadful foreboding. He was avoiding her deliberately. She

drove at once to the hotel. The clerk summoned to her aid could only

inform her that her father had given up his room and had left the hotel

late at night. She could get no further clew. She telegraphed at once to

Acredale and returned to the Spragues, not daring to breathe her

apprehensions. Yes, her father was plainly keeping away from her. He

meant to persist in his savage vengeance. What had he learned? Was Jack

indeed dead, and was his good name the object of her father's hatred?

Whither should she turn? Why had she not thought of this--her fathers

passivity or even opposition? How could she reveal her terrors to the

mother and sister? How make known to them the unworthy side of her

father's character? If in the morning no telegram came from Acredale, it

would be proof that her father was bent, implacably in his purpose to

undo Jack, living or dead. When she reached the lodging, Olympia was

dressed for the street.

"You are just in time. I have matured my plans. First, we must find out

at the proper quarter the names of all the wounded brought here from

Fort Monroe. Then we must trace the report in the _Herald_ down to its

origin. Then we must visit every hospital in and near Washington to find

out from actual sight of each man whether Jack or Dick, or any one we

know, is in the city. As we go on, we shall learn a good deal which may

modify this plan, or perhaps make the search less difficult."

Olympia said this with composure and a certain confidence in herself

that struck Kate with admiration. She felt ashamed of herself. Here was

Olympia, unconscious of Jack's real peril if living, the menace to his

reputation if dead, planning as composedly as if it were an every-day

thing to have a brother lost in the appalling mazes of war; and she had

been weakly depending upon her father, Jack's most persevering enemy!

She recoiled from herself in a shiver of self-reproach as she said:

"Olympia, you have the good sense of a man in an emergency. I am ashamed

of myself. I, who ought to do the thinking for you, am as helpless as a

kitchen-maid set to playing lady in the parlor. I can at least help you;

I can make my body follow you, if I haven't sense enough to suggest."

"Dear Kate, it isn't sense, or insight, or any fine quality of mind that

is needed here. All I ask is, that you won't get dispirited, or, if you

do, don't let mamma see you are. Poor mamma! She is as easily influenced

as a baby. Jack is her darling, remember. All the world is a small

affair to her compared with our poor boy. I fancy, if we were as much

wrapped up in him as she is, we should make poor pioneers in the

wilderness before us."

But Kate could stand no more of this. With a choking sob she turned and

fled up the stairway, crying as she disappeared: "Wait--wait a moment; I

must get my purse."

When she reappeared, the heavy mourning-veil was drawn down, and

Olympia, with a reassured glance, opened the door.

"You must affect confidence, if you have it not--even gayety. I warn you

not to be shocked at my conduct. I must keep up mamma's spirits, and to

do it I must play indifference or confidence, and you must be careful to

say nothing, to do nothing, to excite her suspicions."

Kate's cab had driven off, and the two girls walked through Lafayette

Square into Pennsylvania Avenue to get another. The wide streets were

filled, as of old, with skurrying orderlies, groups of lounging

officers, and lumbering army wagons. But even the untrained eyes of

Olympia soon took account of the better discipline, the more

businesslike celerity of the men on duty as well as the flying couriers.

The White House was gay with hunting, and salutes from the distant forts

were signalizing the news that had just come of Union successes at Mill

Spring and Roanoke Island. The girls, procuring a hack, were driven to

the provost-general's office. Here, after an interminable delay they

were admitted to the presence of a complacent young coxcomb in spotless

regimentals, who, so soon as he saw Olympia's face and bearing, threw

off the listlessness of routine, and, rising deferentially, asked her

pleasure. She told her story simply, and asked his advice as to the

course to be followed. When the extract from the _Herald_ was shown to

him, he examined an enormous folio, and then rang a bell.

"It is more than likely that these names are wrong. This happens

constantly. The operators are raw and some of them can barely read. The

names are given hurriedly, and if not written plainly they make wretched

work of them. The newspapers make many a fool famous, while neglecting

many a hero who deserves fame, simply through the blundering or

carelessness of the writers or operators. Here is an orderly who will

take you to the surgeon-general. You will find in his books the names of

all the wounded in hospital in the Eastern armies. But if your brother

was wounded or brought in wounded at Fort Monroe, his name will be on

the books of the Army of the Potomac or the Department of Eastern

Virginia."

They were treated with the same deferential gallantry at the

surgeon-general's office; the young doctors, indeed, became almost

obtrusive in their eagerness to spare the young women the drudgery of

scrutinizing the long lists of invalids. But, after two days' careful

search, no names resembling Sprague or Perley could be found.

"I wonder who this can be?" Kate said, returning to an entry made a

month before: "Jones, Warchester; Caribee Regiment."

"I know no one of that name," Olympia said, "but perhaps he might know

something of Jack. Let us go to him. It will do no harm to find out

who he is."

The surgeon's clerk readily gave them Jones's address, reminding them

that the hospital was in Georgetown, and that they would be too late to

obtain entrance to the patient that day. Next morning Mrs. Sprague was

too ill to rise from her bed, and Olympia could not leave her alone.

Kate undertook the investigation into the Jones affair alone. When she

reached the hospital there was some delay before she could see the

personage intrusted with the admission of guests. She was shown into an

office on the ground-floor and given a seat. As she sat, distraught and

eager, she heard her own name in the next room, the door of which

stood open:

"It's at Boone's risk. He would have him moved, and the surgeon-general

gave him _carte blanche_ with the patient."

"Well, it will cost the man his life. I'll stake my diploma on that.

Why, the journey to Warchester alone is enough to down the most vigorous

convalescent."

Kate trembled. What did this mean? What was she hearing?

Boone--Warchester? Whom had her father been taking from the

hospital--Jack? Her heart gave a wild leap. Yes--Jack. Who else did her

father know in the army? She arose trembling, fainting, but resolute.

She reached the open door, but tried for a moment in vain to ask:

"If you please, tell me, tell me--" But she could say no more. The

occupants of the room, in undress uniform, turned upon her at first in

hostile surprise, but, as she threw her veil farther back in alarm, the

elder of the two said:

"Pray, madam, what is it; are you ill?"

"No; may I sit down, please? Thank you. I am come to, to--" What should

she say? How expose the doubt of her father? How find out for certain

who had been removed to Warchester--abducted was the word her agitated

thoughts shaped. Oh, if Olympia, intrepid, self-possessed, were only

with her!--but no, not Olympia; no one must ever know the unutterable

crime she suspected her father of. She must be brave. She must be

resolute. Oh, where were her arts now, when she most needed them? She

tried to speak. A hoarse gasping came in her throat and died there.

"Ah--ah--some water!--I--I am faint."

In an instant a goblet of cool water was at her lips. She drank slowly,

deliberating all the time to recover her senses; the surgeons--both

young men, mere lads--waiting respectfully, inferring much from the

melancholy robes. The water cooled her head, and she began to be able to

think coherently.

"I have the surgeon-general's permit to visit a patient in your fever

ward--Jones, the name is. Can I see him?"

"Pray, let me see the permit, madam?" He glanced at it, looked

significantly at his comrade, and said:

"This man was removed three days ago."

"Whereto?"

"Warchester."

"Ah!" Kate's veil, by an imperceptible gesture, fell over part of her

face. A great trembling came upon her again. The young surgeons

exchanged glances.

"Who--who--did--who asked for his removal?"

"A Mr. Boone, also of Warchester."

"Thank you--I am too late--I wanted to--to ask this Mr. Jones some

questions concerning a dear friend in his regiment. But I can write, if

you will kindly give me the address."

"I am very sorry--beyond Warchester we have no record here of his

whereabouts. If he had been officially transferred to another government

hospital, we should have all the facts. But the removal was a personal

favor to Mr. Boone. He is well known both here and in Warchester, and

you can have no difficulty in communicating with him."

"Ah, true; I had forgotten that."

"If we can be of any service to you, Miss Sprague," the young man said,

handing Kate back the permit, made out in Olympia's name, which Kate had

never thought of, "you can always reach us through the surgeon-general's

office." He handed her a card with his own and his comrade's name

in pencil.

Thanking the young man with as much self-possession as she could summon,

Kate reached the carriage in a whirl of wild imaginings, more terrifying

as she strove to reduce them to definite shape. Who was this Jones? Why

remove him to Warchester? If it were not Jack, what interest could her

father have in his removal? But. first, what could she say to Olympia?

She could say she did not know Jones, but Olympia would surely ask what

questions she had put to him. What should she say? That he had been

taken away from the hospital? She knew Olympia well enough to know that

this vague story would only incite her to further inquiry. She would

find out the father's handiwork in the affair, and she, too, would be

set on the rack of suspicion.

When the carriage reached the door, Kate dared not enter. She dismissed

the man and set out toward the green fields below the rounded slope of

Meridian Hill. Here she could breathe freely. "I can think clearly now,"

she panted, with a gush of warm tears. If she could only remain calm,

she could look Into the black abyss with the eye of reason, rather than

terror. Calmness came soothingly as she walked, and she began at the

beginning, weighing probabilities. All seemed dark and hopeless, until

she came back to the record in the surgeon-general's office. Jones, sent

from Hampton Hospital, December 13th. This was about the time Jack had

reached the Union lines. He had left Richmond late in November. All

Brodie's inquiries at Fort Monroe had been fruitless in finding the

whereabouts of the fugitives that came through the lines at that time.

Dick had been one of them. If Jones were not Jack himself, he must have

been one of the group that escaped with Jack. It all led back to the

first frightful conjecture. Her father was abducting a witness who could

divulge Jack's whereabouts, or he was secreting Jack until be could work

him harm. The walk began to revive Kate's courage as well as her

faculties. She must act with energy. The hardest part of the problem was

to get clear of Olympia, for Kate at once made up her mind to quit

Washington that very night for home. She must evade Olympia's inquiries

as best she could, and make some excuse for journeying thither.

When she reached home, fortune had intervened to save her conscience

from the falsehoods she feared she would have to employ. The landlady

met her in the hallway with a white face.

"O Miss Boone, Mrs. Sprague is taken very bad. The doctor's with her

now. I think it is typhoid fever."

Up-stairs misfortune gave her a further release. Olympia came into

Kate's room, agitated and in tears.

"All, Kate, mamma is suffering pitiably. The doctor thinks it is

typhoid, and he ordered me to remain away from her. You must leave the

house. It won't do for all of us to be ill together. I may not be able

to see you for days, until the crisis is past. But you must continue the

search, and you must let me know, from day to day, what you learn. There

are letters for you--I hear mamma. I will be back in a moment."

Kate fairly hated herself for the passing thrill of relief over the

timely illness that had intervened to expedite her mission. She glanced

over the letters. There was one in her father's hand, postmarked

Acredale. It contained no clew to his purposes, but she read

tremblingly:

"My daughter: You are doing a foolish thing. The search you propose can

lead to nothing. All that can be done has been done by his friends. They

have found no trace of him. Women can not hope to succeed where so keen

a man as Brodie has failed. I have every confidence that in good time

the matter will be cleared up, but you must remember that the Government

and its agents have all they can do to manage and keep track of the

millions of soldiers in the field, and they can not be expected to take

much interest in the fate of the wounded or dead. Always affectionately.

"Your Father."

All doubt of her father's sinister intervention in Jack's disappearance

now took the form of certainty in the girl's mind. When Olympia came

back, a few moments later, Kate said, tenderly:

"I have news from home. I must go back at once. It is less of a grief to

me, since I should be banished from you if I were here. I shall not be

gone long. I shall certainly be back as soon as you can receive me. In

the mean while, don't despair. I have been put on a new trail that I can

not explain to you now. But I can say this much, when you see me again

you shall know whether Jack is alive or dead."

Olympia, who had been so strong, cheery, and masterful when it had been

a question of reassuring her mother, was now the stricken spirit. She

looked at Kate through swimming eyes, and her voice was lost in sobs as

she tried to speak. The girls held each other in a tearful silence,

neither able to say what was in the minds of both. Even the uncertainty

had a sort of solace compared with the dreadful possibility of

the worst.

"Remember, dear, you have your mother. What is our poor grief to hers;

what is our loss to hers? It ought to comfort you to know that whatever

human thought, courage, love can do to recover Jack, I shall do, just as

you would in my place. I am very strong and resolute now, and I am

filled with hope--so filled that I can not talk to you. I dare not let

you see how much I hope, lest if it be not fulfilled you will hate me

for inspiring you with it."

"I will hope. I do believe you will do better than I should. The loving

are the daring--you will find Jack. I know it."

"Ah, God bless you, Olympia! That removes a curse from me--I--I mean

that fills me with a courage that is not my own, I have learned yours or

stolen it. But you will forgive me, for I mean to use it all in

your behalf."

Olympia smiled sadly, and the two parted. By the night express Kate left

the city, and, the next afternoon, reached Acredale. As she anticipated,

her father was not at home. He had only been an hour or two in the house

since his return. The servants had no idea where he was. His letters

were forwarded to him under cover of his lawyers in Warchester. If, as

she fearfully surmised, her father were engaged in some cruel scheme to

the hurt of Jack, her best way with him would be perfect frankness. She

had never yet failed in swerving him from his most headstrong impulses

when she could talk with him. She must have him now to herself. Her best

plan, therefore, would be to write. Yet she hardly knew how to frame the

note, reflecting bitterly, as she sat twirling her pen, on the monstrous

state of things that made writing to her own father almost a duplicity.

At length she wrote:

"DEAREST PAPA: I am come all the way from Washington, leaving poor Mrs.

Sprague very low with fever, and her daughter tormented and ill with

anxiety. I feel, I know, that you can relieve the distress of this

miserable mother and devoted sister. I must see you. I felt sure of

seeing you in Washington, and you can imagine my surprise and grief when

they told me at the hotel that you had gone. Do come to me, or let me

come to you. Your daughter's place is with you or near you now. We have

only each other in this world; pray, dear father, let nothing come

between us; let nothing make you doubt the constant love of

your daughter.

"KATE."

The note dispatched, she went immediately to the Perleys. Perhaps they

had news that might be of help. No. The three ladies met her with

agitated volubility. Had she heard from their nephew? Had Dick escaped

with Jack? Olympia had assured them that he had quitted Richmond with

her brother. They had written to the Caribee regiment, and received word

that no trace of him could be found. The regiment, or what was left of

it, was home refilling its ranks. The officers, indeed, knew nothing of

such a person as Richard Perley. McGoyle, who was now colonel, did

vaguely recall the lad at Washington, but had no idea what became of

him. Kate found a new grief in the misery of the helpless ladies. But

she could give them no comfort, and returned home to await her father's

coming. In the evening a messenger brought her a note. It was in the

straight, emphatic hand of her father. He wrote: