THE MILITARY BALL.
On the night of the ball Dolly early betook herself to the "ladies'
drawing-room," so called. This was simply the big spare room, or
bedchamber. A fire had been burning since dusk in the fireplace, but
a chilliness, mingled with a faint odor of smoke, still lingered in
the atmosphere of the room. In one corner stood a huge tent-bedstead,
draped with Indian chintz, upon which strange birds of brilliant
plumage perched among still stranger and more brilliant flowers. The
window and dressing-table draperies were of the same pattern, so was
the covering of the great arm-chair in the chimney-corner.
I hesitate in telling you that this chair came over in the
_Mayflower_. There is enough so-called _Mayflower_ furniture in
existence in this A. D. 1885 to have filled twice over a
bigger vessel than that historic bark, whose tonnage, if I remember
aright, fell considerably below two hundred.
But this chair did _really_ come over in the _Mayflower_, and landed
at Plymouth December 21, 1620, with the rest of the Pilgrims. It
certainly looked ancient enough and battered enough to have been in
the Ark at the time of the Deluge, when Aunt Anna hid its age and
shabbiness under the aforesaid Indian chintz, and stuffed it with the
softest of live-geese feathers. It was a true Sleepy Hollow, and Dolly
sank into it with a keen sense of luxurious comfort.
The interval of waiting was not long. She had snuffed the candles
in the candelabra on either side of the mirror but once, when a
jingling of sleigh-bells was heard, and directly after the door of
the bedchamber opened, and a bundle of wraps, from out which a pair
of china-blue eyes peeped, came in. The bundle rolled up to the fire,
holding out a pair of mittened hands, and exclaiming, "Oh, it's
dreadful cold, but the sleighing's gorgeous!"
Pretty soon the hands, getting warm, began to peel off sections of
wrapper, as one gets at the heart of an onion--or, to use a prettier
and more appropriate simile, the wraps began to unfold like the calyx
of a flower, blossoming at last into a pretty little lady with light
hair, pink cheeks, and china-blue eyes, and clad in gossamery white
tarlatan, with low neck and short sleeves.
"Oh," exclaimed Dolly, with a sympathizing shiver, "weren't you cold
riding in that gown?"
"Not a bit!" laughed Blue-eyes. "I was wrapped up so, you know, an'
then we had lots o' buffaloes." (She meant carriage-robes.) "An' ma
heat two bricks for my feet an' one for my hands. Silas says he'll
have 'em heat again when we go home. Oh no--I wa'n't cold a mite!"
She then pulled off two long blue-yarn stockings, displaying a pair of
pink silk slippers.
"Ain't they pretty?" she asked, putting them out for Dolly to admire.
"Oh, I do hope nobody else won't have pink silk slippers! Silas got
'em for me in Boston. Silas goes to Boston real often."
Having carefully rolled up her wraps, she put them in a corner of
the tent-bedstead, where she could get them in the general scrimmage
for wraps that would ensue at the close of the ball, and then opened
a round purple bandbox which "Silas" had brought to the door. It
contained an assortment of artificial roses, mostly pink, which were
to be disposed about her small person.
"Ma said I must have a bunch on my skirt where it is caught up, an'
another right here"--indicating the edge of her low corsage--"an'
some in my hair. I wonder if you could fix me?" she added, looking
doubtfully at Dolly. "I expect Daisy ev'ry minute. I call her 'Daisy,'
though her real name's Phœbe Ann, you know. She always fixes me, an' I
fix her. But p'r'aps you'll do."
"Oh yes," said Dolly, cordially, "I'll like to do it. I sometimes help
dress mamma. She says I'm almost as good as Norah--that's her maid,
you know," and she took the roses and began draping the somewhat stiff
tarlatan.
"Who is your ma?" asked Blue-eyes, "and don't you live here?"
"Oh no, I live in Boston," said Dolly.
"Do tell!" exclaimed Blue-eyes. "Why, I guess you're the little girl
we heard about who is visiting here an' lost her pony, ain't you?"
"Yes," replied Dolly, beginning to feel the inconvenience of being
famous. "But don't you think this wreath is too heavy for your hair?
Let me put just one or two roses in your braids. There! now look."
Blue-eyes tipped her head first on one side and then on the other,
and smiled at herself in the mirror, not a little vain of her rustic
prettiness.
"Oh yes, I like that real well; they kind o' bring out the plaits,
don't you think so? It took ma four hours to do those plaits, an' I
thought I _should_ die--I _was_ so tired! But it pays," she added,
smiling again at herself in the mirror.
Before Dolly had altogether finished Blue-eyes there was another
entrance--a rush, an embrace, a sound of broken kisses, and then
Daisy, _alias_ Phœbe Ann, blossomed out from her calyx, a brown little
lady, with brown hair and brown eyes, clothed in pink tarlatan, with
low neck and short sleeves. She had a green bandbox containing white
roses.
"Why, where's your wreath, Pansy?" she asked, in a disappointed tone.
"We were goin' to fix our hair just alike, I thought."
"Oh, this little girl fixed my hair. She thought it looked nicer so,
an' so do I. She'll fix yours just like it, I guess."
Blue-eyes, or Pansy, as we may call her now, was just sixteen, and to
her, thirteen-year-old Dolly was still a "little girl." There's a vast
distance between thirteen and sixteen--a good deal more than there is
between twenty-five and twenty-eight.
So Dolly, ready to oblige and always liking to do that sort of thing,
proceeded to "fix" Phœbe Ann's plaited brown locks, and before that
was done there were more arrivals.
The jingling of sleigh-bells became almost incessant, and the door of
the "drawing-room" only closed to open upon a new arrival. The room
grew crowded, the bundles of wraps on the tent-bedstead multiplied,
and there was a continuous chattering and fluttering, and mingling of
rainbow tints, and a sweet odor of musk and rose as in a garden of
blossoming plants. Half a dozen faces at a time were mirrored in the
looking-glass, one above another, and the owners nodded and smiled at
each other, and displayed their white teeth in joyous anticipation of
the near pleasures of the ball.
Pansy and Daisy, having got "fixed" to their satisfaction, came and
sat down on low stools upon the hearth-rug by the fire, and chattered
like a couple of English sparrows.
"Silence Rose 'll be the belle o' the ball, I s'pose," twittered
Pansy. "Nobody else has a chance when she's 'round."
"An' she's twenty-five, 'f she's a day. An' it's time she gave way
to us young ones, ma says," returned Daisy, who had also reached the
mature age of sixteen.
"Well, she _is_ handsome," sighed Pansy. "Oh, there she comes now!"
Dolly looked with some curiosity to see this Silence emerge from _her_
calyx. Her head was swathed in a cloud-like wrap of soft white wool,
and from head to foot she was clothed in a garment of white fur. She
was tall, and looked like a lily in her white wraps.
The calyx unfolded and displayed a slender young woman with jet-black
hair, a complexion of cream-and-roses, and a pair of eyes of the soft
brilliancy of stars.
A cry of admiring surprise, followed by a murmur of unqualified
delight, accompanied the falling of the wrap of white fur on the floor.
"It's a military ball, you know," said Silence, with a comprehensive
smile around the room, "and so I thought I'd come as the Daughter of
the Regiment."
She had chosen the colors of our national flag for her dress. The
skirt was of alternate stripes of red and white, the waist of blue,
trimmed with scarlet bands and gilt buttons, while a cunning little
epaulet adorned either shoulder. On her head she wore the jaunty cap
our Goddess of Liberty usually wears. A strap went over her right
shoulder and under her left arm. There were thirteen gilt stars on
this strap, and to it was attached a canteen, around the edge of which
was printed in gold letters, "THOMAS ROSE, 1775."
"Oh, oh!" exclaimed the multitude. "Where _did_ you get that, Silence?
Isn't it cute?"
"My grandfather carried it in the revolutionary war," she replied,
somewhat proudly, turning her head and stretching her neck to get a
glimpse of it where it rested on the full skirt.
She then went up to the looking-glass and surveyed herself hastily, in
an indifferent sort of way.
"Oh!" said the envious Daisy, "_she_ can afford not to look at
herself."
Just then the squeak of violins was heard from the dancing-hall, from
which a single partition only separated the ladies' drawing-room. At
the sound Pansy and Daisy hastily arose and began to settle their
skirts; Dolly, too, sprang from the depths of the Sleepy Hollow, and
there was a simultaneous preening of fine feathers.
"When you hear the fiddles begin to tune up, Dolly, you must start,"
Ned had said. "Just come up to the back door of the hall, an' I'll be
there, an' we'll get in time enough to see 'em come in."
So Dolly slipped out from the room, and ran down-stairs through the
long entrance-hall and the dining-room, to the flight of stairs
that led up into the L, in the rear of the dancing-hall. Ned was in
waiting as he had promised, and there was just time to seat themselves
comfortably on one of the benches that stood against the wall, and
look about a bit, before the entrance of the dancers.
The walls of the hall were dazzlingly white, having been recently
whitewashed, and were draped with flags and trimmed with evergreens,
with which were mingled the plumes of the Byfield Light Infantry.
These were tall, stiff made feathers of white, tipped with scarlet.
Custom, of course, would not permit the wearing of these plumes at the
ball with the accompanying box-like hat of shiny leather, decorated
with a gilt eagle and scarlet tassels, so they had been put to this
decorative purpose. The hall was lighted with the best of sperm-oil,
in small globe lamps with tin reflectors. In these days of the
brilliant and odorous kerosene, not to mention gas, the hall would
doubtless seem dim, but it certainly did not seem so to Dolly and Ned.
"Oh," said Dolly, with a deep sigh of content, "it's perfectly lovely!"
The musicians sat on a platform built into a recess on one side of the
fireplace at the upper end of the hall. There were three violins, a
'cello, a harp, cymbals, and a bugle.
"D'ye see that man with the bugle? That's Kendall," said Ned. "He's
tip-top."
The players having at last brought their various instruments into
harmony, struck into the first chords of the "Wood-up Quickstep;"
and presently in swept the Daughter of the Regiment, led by a tall,
handsome man whom Ned said was her brother, the captain of the light
infantry. They were followed by the whole company in pairs, who
moved up the hall, then across, and down past where Dolly and Ned
were sitting, and so round and round many times, moving gracefully
and slowly, with soft rustle of tarlatan and silk and muslin, and
manly tread of soldierly feet, and bewildering color of scarlet and
white and blue. The uniform of the light infantry consisted of white
trousers with a scarlet stripe down the outside, and coats of blue,
decorated with scarlet and gilt, a very effective costume for a
ballroom.
At the very last came Cousin Kitty.
Cousin Kitty had brought with her to Byfield no ball-dress proper, and
at first said she would wear a pale blue cashmere. But Aunt Anna had
remonstrated.
"My dear," she said, "it will be a great pleasure for our young
people to see you in full dress. We don't often get a glimpse of such
elegancies here; not once in a lifetime, indeed. Besides, I'm afraid
if you wear an ordinary dress they may take offence, and feel that you
didn't think it worth while to 'dress up' for country-folk."
So Cousin Kitty had one of her party dresses sent down from
Boston--the very gown, in fact, in which she had been presented at the
court of the good Queen Adelaide, which fact being whispered about the
ballroom, caused her at first to be regarded with considerable awe,
until it was ascertained that she was much like other mortals.
Her gown was of white silk with a long, undulating train, but with no
garniture except the Little Madam's chrysanthemums, which, you may
remember, Dolly had fondly hoped to have worn on this occasion, as an
accompaniment to the yellow satin. She did wear chrysanthemums, as it
was. She and Cousin Kitty had divided them, and very pretty they were,
with her blue velvet frock for background.
Cousin Kitty's partner was not in military dress, but wore the usual
full dress of a gentleman, and Dolly did not at first recognize in
him the brown-eyed doctor whom she was most used to see driving at
headlong speed behind his white-eyed racker, with a small trunk of
medicines at his feet.
"How pretty Pansy looks!" said Dolly, as Blue-eyes went dimpling by
with Silas, a diminutive, fair-haired young soldier.
"Pansy!" repeated Ned, scornfully. "Her name's Betsey Jane Bump. What
geese girls are!--some girls, I mean," bethinking himself that he was
talking to one of the "geese." "I'd knock a boy into the middle o'
next week that called _me_ 'Pansy.'"
"Oh, well, that's different," said Dolly. "Of course a boy wouldn't
want to be called Pansy."
"Well, I shouldn't think a girl would, either, 'f she had any sense."
A cotillion followed the polonaise, and this was succeeded by
money-musk, which in turn was followed by another cotillion, and
Dolly found herself taken out by a tall, military gentleman, who was
presented to her by her friend the brown-eyed doctor, and she danced
her very best, while Ned looked on admiringly.
The Little Madam came in and formed a part of the group of lookers-on
at the lower end of the hall, of whom Thankful was one and Betty's
mother, who had come in to help about the supper, another. They had
left the turkeys comfortably browning in the brick ovens while they
took this outing.
"Wa'al," sighed Betty's mother, a stout, middle-aged woman weighing
about two hundred and fifty pounds, "my dancin' days 're over. But I
did use t' like it when I's a gal. An' I like t' look on now 's well
's I ever did."
"Wa'al, for my part, I never had no dancin' days," rejoined Thankful.
"Never had no time f' caperin'."
"You don't mean t' say, now, Miss Makepeace, that y' don't a'prove o'
dancin'?" asked Betty's mother, anxiously.
"I a'prove on't if anybody c'n do it," said Thankful. "Look at Miss
Kitty there! I a'prove o' _her_ dancin'."
Cousin Kitty was dancing the Spanish Dance, in which she managed her
long train so admirably as to call forth the unqualified commendation
of her admirers at the foot of the hall.
"Dew see now!" exclaimed Betty's mother. "She jest giv' a kind o' a
fling an' scooped it round quicker'n a wink! Anybody else 'd 'a' sot
down on it."
"Wa'al, a young woman that's be'n t' a real court an' shook han's 'ith
th' queen, an' jest as like's not danced 'ith th' king, 'd ough' t'
know how t' manage the tail o' her gown!" said Thankful, with some
asperity.
"Dew tell, now! Y' don't say so, reelly, Miss Makepeace! Be'n t'
court! Wa'al, wa'al, this is new times f' Byfield!"
And so the winged moments flew by all too swiftly, and twelve o'clock,
the hour for serving the supper, drew nigh.
"I s'pose we'll have to go to bed as soon as we've seen the tables,"
said Dolly, as she seated herself by Ned, flushed and sparkling from a
"grand right and left" all around the hall.
"Yes, I s'pose so," replied Ned, discontentedly. "I wish we could have
some turkey, but mother said only bread and butter. I say, Dolly, when
I'm a man I don't believe I'll touch bread and butter. I'm just sick
of it!"
"I don't care much about the turkey, but I do love the dancing," was
Dolly's reply.
"Dotty," said Cousin Kitty, coming up just then, "will you run down
and ask Auntie exactly the hour that supper is to be served? Doctor
Stone would like to know. He is to visit a patient at one o'clock."
"Stay just there, Ned, and I'll be back in a minute," said Dolly; and
she ran quickly down the long passage and the stairway leading to the
outer kitchen, opened the kitchen door, and stepped into a pan of
gravy which Betty, not expecting arrivals from that quarter, had left
upon the floor. She had come down with such vehemence that she sent a
shower of greasy drops over the floor, and, what was still worse, over
her pretty frock of blue velvet.
"Oh! oh!" she cried out in dismay, withdrawing her foot well covered
with "thickening." "I didn't mean to! I didn't know 'twas there!"
"Of course you didn't," was Aunt Anna's reply, who always took the
sunny view of things. "I'm glad it wasn't hot, that's all. Just run
to your room now, my dear, and change your dress. Lay it carefully by
itself--we can take it all out, I think."
Dolly paused for only just one look around the kitchen, which was just
then so full of steam from the boiling vegetables as to obscure the
light of the many candles, each of which seemed isolated in a little
island of mist. Then she turned, by force of habit, to take what Ned
would have called the "short cut" to her room--viz., that leading
through the main entrance hall. As she opened the door of the great
dining-room which led into this hall, however, she caught a glimpse of
a group of gentlemen in military dress standing at the farther end.
No; that would never do! she could not go that way; she could
not expose to the eye of any one she might chance to meet her
gravy-bedaubed velvet. She paused, with her hand resting on the latch,
to consider.
There was one other way--a way, too, where there would not be the
remotest possibility of meeting anybody. That way led from the
dining-room up the old flight of stairs to the secret chamber, thence
through the Little Madam's room to the passage which passed by her own
door. The Little Madam she had just left busy at mashing turnips in
the kitchen, and the coast was clear in that direction.
So, leaving the dining-room, she groped along with outstretched arms
through the narrow entry and up the dark stairs, making a slight
noise as she stumbled once or twice over the unfamiliar steps; for
though she had often gone over them in the daytime, when the light,
though dim, was sufficient, she had never attempted to do so in the
night. Having arrived, as she judged, at the panel, she put out her
hand in search of the magic clover-leaf--the "open sesame" to what
she sometimes called her Ali Baba's cave--when she felt it seized by
another hand, and she was drawn firmly but gently within the secret
chamber, while a familiar voice hoarsely whispered, "'Sh! 'sh! don't
y' make no noise! It's me, Dolly! y' needn't b' scared. I'm mighty
glad y're come!"
"Why, 'Zekle, what's the matter, and what are you doing here?" asked
the startled Dolly, suppressing by a hair's-breadth the scream that
had rushed to her lips when 'Zekle touched her hand.
"'Sh! 'sh! don't make no noise! the critter 'll hear. He's right
here, a-gittin' in t' the Little Madam's winder. I see him a-skulkin'
'roun', an' jes' kep' watch o' the pesky critter; an' he's a-walkin'
inter th' trap 's innercent 's a weasel." And 'Zekle chuckled a very
subdued chuckle, as befitted the situation.
"But who is it? Who's a-getting into the window?" asked Dolly.
"Why, the identikle vill'in that stole Skatta, an' killed Gaston, an'
tried t' rob the squire; an' _this_ time he's a goner."
"But where is he?" persisted Dolly, still slightly bewildered.
"Why, a-gittin' inter th' Little Madam's winder, didn't I tell y'?"
replied 'Zekle, impatiently. "Jest look 'n here!" and he slipped the
noiseless panel into the Little Madam's room, and Dolly saw the thief
by the window quite plainly, for the night was clear though moonless.
While they were looking, he slipped out the pane of glass upon the
setting of which he had been at work.
"There!" said 'Zekle, closing the panel. "Now you jest run an' git
the squire here quicker 'n scat. He'll find that spring in a minute,
an' I might manage him alone, an' then ag'in I mightn't." And while
he was yet speaking, Dolly was off, flying with winged feet, utterly
unmindful of the gravy-bedaubed velvet, in search of Uncle Harry, whom
she found at last talking politics in the bar-room with some of the
neighbors, who had sauntered in, as usual, to look at the dancing and
partake of the good cheer.
She whispered just a word or two in his ear, and he immediately
followed her out of the room. She had only said, "Oh, Uncle Harry,
he's come again, and 'Zekle's got him."
But as they hurried along she told him who had come, and explained the
situation, and he took down his musket in passing.
"Don't come any farther, Dolly," he said, peremptorily, as they
reached the stairs leading to the secret chamber, and she was forced
to obey, though fired with a sudden courage, and an intense desire to
be in at the capture of her old enemy. She listened, however--she was
not forbidden to do that. A few whispered words passed between Uncle
Harry and 'Zekle; then there was the sound of a window cautiously
lifted, a muffled footstep upon the floor of the Little Madam's room;
these were succeeded by a brief struggle, and then there was silence.
Presently Uncle Harry came to the door of the secret chamber, from
which a light was now streaming, and peered into the dark depths below.
"Are you there, Dolly?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Just go and get Doctor Stone, will you? And don't tell anybody else."
Doctor Stone! Where was Doctor Stone? In the ballroom, of course. And
how am I to get to him without everybody seeing me? And if everybody
sees me, how can I keep them from finding out that something has
happened, anyhow?
These were some of the perplexing questions that slipped through
Dolly's mind as she half-mechanically made her way to the rear
entrance of the hall, where she had left Ned, and where she hoped
still to find him. There he was, with his eyes fixed on the door,
momentarily expecting her to come in to report the exact hour for
supper, and wondering what was keeping her so long.
She beckoned to him. "Ned," she said, holding the door open a couple
of inches, "just tell Doctor Stone to come down into the little entry
off the dining-room. Don't let anybody hear you tell him, and he
mustn't tell and you mustn't." And having so spoken, she attempted to
close the door, but Ned was too quick for her: he grasped her sleeve,
exclaiming,
"What's the matter, Dolly? How your eyes shine! 'Tisn't mother?" he
added, anxiously.
"Nothing's the matter to trouble about; but oh, let me go! And do
hurry, Ned! You'll know by-and-by." And shutting the door, she hurried
to the entry, where it seemed ages before Doctor Stone appeared,
although it was really only about two minutes. She explained at once:
"'Zekle and Uncle Harry have got the thief that killed Gaston. He was
getting in at a window, and they caught him, and Uncle Harry wants
you."
Doctors are never taken by surprise, whether it's an earthquake or a
fit, a revolution or a gunshot wound. But they always feel safest when
they have their remedies at hand; so the doctor said, "Oughtn't I to
go out and get my medicine-chest?"
"Oh no, I don't believe it's that," said Dolly. "I didn't hear
anything."
"Oh, but--halloo!" said the doctor, incoherently, "how did you happen
to be there?"
"I wasn't there--only part way there," said Dolly; "and I mustn't go
any farther," she added, as they reached the staircase.
"Well, this is interesting!" said the doctor. "Seems like the first
chapter in a first-rate novel. I never saw this secret chamber before;
heard of it, though."
Uncle Harry only wanted to consult with the doctor, as the most
judicious person at hand, as to what disposal to make of the thief
until morning, when of course he could be taken to the county jail at
Plymouth. They had already tied his hands with a rope which 'Zekle had
taken the precaution to have at hand.
"It's just as well to get the fellow off quietly," Mr. Park said. "I
suppose nobody knows anything about it but you," turning to 'Zekle.
"I said nothin' t' nobody," replied 'Zekle. "Tho' 'f I'd had time when
I see him a-makin' f' th' winder, I might 'a' got some help."
"Everything's so full here to-night, outbuildings and all, there don't
seem to be any place to put him," continued Mr. Park.
"Put him in my office," rejoined the doctor. "'Zekle can keep watch
over him, I suppose."
"I reckon he won't be likely to get away," was 'Zekle's grim response.
"Here's his own wep'n," displaying the huge pistol.
So between them Mr. Park and 'Zekle led the thief out by a side door
opening into the garden, and over to Doctor Stone's office, and
neither the dancers in the ballroom, nor the busy caterers in the
kitchen, nor the gossiping neighbors in the bar-room, got a hint of
this comedy which had come nigh to being a tragedy, and the knowledge
of which the next day stirred Byfield to its very depths.
The doctor stayed to replace the pane the thief had taken from the
window, and then going home he laid aside his dress suit for his
ordinary suit of tweed, and went off for a five-mile ride, to visit a
patient dangerously ill with lung fever.
Meanwhile Dolly soothed the perturbed cockatoo, whose midnight
slumbers had been abruptly broken by the sharp though brief struggle
made to secure the thief.
"Oh dear! oh dear! Where is she? Where's my love? Kiss poor
Polly--poor Polly--poor--poor--Pol--ol--ol--" and he was again asleep.
"I'll go to bed. It'll never do for me to see Ned. He'll get it out of
me," Dolly was saying to herself, as she stepped out into the passage,
and almost ran plumply into that young gentleman himself, who had been
seeking her vainly everywhere.
"Good-night!" she cried out, hastily retreating towards her own room.
Ned made a plunge at her, attempting to seize her arm again, and only
missing it by half an inch, and the next instant she was inside her
room with the door shut.
He retreated from the field beaten and not a little sore. What _was_
this wonderful secret, and he went off in search of the doctor. He
was not to be found, neither was his father, and even 'Zekle had
mysteriously disappeared.
He went to the dining-room, where his mother was superintending the
taking in of the supper.
"Mother, what's the matter with Dolly?" he asked.
"She stepped into a pan of gravy," was the unsatisfactory reply.
"But she's gone to bed," persisted Ned.
"Well, I dare say she felt too tired to change her clothes," said Mrs.
Park, absently, as she indicated to Betty where to place the last of a
long line of vegetable dishes.
"Too tired!" reflected Ned, in disgust. "Why, not half an hour ago she
was for setting up all night." And utterly baffled, he, too, went off
to bed.
Here the slayer of Gaston, the thief, drops out of our story. He was
tried and condemned to fifteen years' imprisonment on two indictments,
viz., "assault and battery" and "breaking and entering." His doings
were more than a nine-days' wonder in Byfield. He made no confession,
but it was supposed he had been hanging about ever since the return of
Skatta, waiting for a chance to get possession of the Little Madam's
reported "treasure," in the existence of which everybody but himself
had ceased to believe. He had fixed upon the night of the ball as a
favorable time in which to make the attempt, with what success we have
seen.