The Iron Game by Henry Francis Keenan (page 3)

“Yes, my poor girl, I am a father and have a heart; the more’s the pity, for just now something else is needed in its place. I suppose your father is over yonder,” and he nodded toward the Virginia shore.

“O Mr. Lincoln, my father is farther away than that. My father was Senator Sprague–you served with him in Congress–I–I–thought that perhaps you might take pity on his widow, his daughter, his son, if the poor boy is still living, and–and–“

“Send you across the lines?”

“Oh, if God would put it in your heart!”

“It’s in my heart fast enough, my poor child, but–“

“Impossible, Mr. President! The enemy, as it is, can open a Sabine campaign on us, and tie our hands by stretching Northern women out in a line of battle between the ranks!”

It was the weary, discouraging voice of the Secretary, imperiously implying that the Executive must not interpose weakness and mercy where Draconian rigor sat enthroned. The President smiled sadly.

“Ah, Mr. Secretary, a sister–a mother–give a great deal for the country. We can not err much in granting their prayer. Make out an order–for whom?”

Olympia, speechless with gratitude reverence could hardly articulate:

“My mother, myself, and Miss Marcia Perley.”

“Another mother?”

“Her boy is not of age, and ran away to join my brother’s company.” She had a woman’s presence of mind to answer with this diplomatic evasion.

“I’m afraid you will only add to your distress, my poor child; but you shall go.” He inclined his head benignantly and passed into the inner sanctuary behind the rail, when Olympia heard the Secretary say, grimly:

“I shall take measures to stop this sort of thing, Mr. President. Hereafter you shall only come to this department at certain hours. At all other times the doors shall be guarded.”

A gray-haired man in undress uniform presently appeared, and as he handed Olympia the large official envelope he said, respectfully:

“You never heard of me, Miss Sprague? Many years ago the Senator, your father, did a kind turn for my brother–an employe in the Treasury. If I can be of any aid to you in this painful business, pray give me a chance to show a kindness to the family of a great and good man. My name is Charles Bevan, and it is signed to one of the papers in this letter.”

Within an hour all was ready, but they could not set out until the next morning, when, by eight o’clock, the three ladies were _en route_. There was a large company with them, all under a flag of truce. They passed through the long lines of soldiery that lay intrenched on the Virginia side of the Potomac, and pushed on to Annandale, where the rebel outpost received them. Olympia’s eyes dwelt on the wide-stretching lands of pine and oak, remembering the pictures Jack had given in his letters of this very same route. But there were few signs of war. The cleared places lay red and baking under the hot August sun; the trees seemed crisp and sapless.

At Fairfax Court-House, where the first signs of real warlike tenure were seen, the visitors were taken into a low frame house, and each in turn asked to explain the objects of her mission. Then the hospital reports were searched. In half a dozen or more instances the sad-eyed mothers were thrown into tremulous hope by the tidings of their darlings’ whereabouts. But for Olympia and Aunt Merry there was no clew. No such names as Sprague or Perley were recorded in the fateful pages of the hospital corps. But there were several badly wounded in the hospital at Manassas, where fuller particulars were accessible.

They were conducted very politely by a young lieutenant in a shabby gray uniform to an ambulance and driven four miles southward to Fairfax Station on the railway, when, after despairing hours of waiting, they were taken by train to Manassas. An orderly accompanied them, and as the train passed beyond Union Mills, where the Bull Run River runs along the railway a mile or more before crossing under it, the young soldier pointed out the distant plateau, near the famous stone bridge, and, when the train crossed the river, the high bluffs, a half-mile to the northward, where the action had begun at Blackburn’s Ford. He was very respectful and gentle in alluding to the battle, and said, ingenuously, pointing to the plateau jutting out from the Bull Run Mountains:

“At two o’clock on Sunday we would have cried quits to McDowell to hold his ground and let us alone. But just as we were on our heel to turn, Joe Johnston came piling in here, right where you see that gully yonder, with ten thousand fresh men, and in twenty minutes we were three to one, and then your folks had the worst of it. President Davis got off the train at the junction yonder, and as he rode across this field, where we are now, the woods yonder were full of our men, flying from the Henry House Hill, where Sherman had cut General Bee’s brigade to pieces and was routing Jackson–‘Stonewall,’ we call him now, because General Bonham, when he brought up the reserves, shouted, ‘See, there, where Jackson stands like a stone wall!’ He’s a college professor and very pious; he makes his men pray before fighting, and has ‘meetings’ in the commissary tent twice a week.”

“Did Mr. Davis join in the battle?” Olympia asked, more to seem interested in the garrulous warrior’s narrative than because she really had her mind on the story.

“Oh, dear, no. Old Johnston had finished the job before the President (Olympia noticed that all Southerners dwelt upon this title with complacent insistence) could reach the field. He was barely in time to see the cavalry of ‘Jeb’ Stuart charge the regulars on the Warrenton road.”

The train came to a halt, and the young man said, cheerfully:

“Here we are. The hospital’s still right smart over yonder in the trees.”

“But you will go with us, will you not?” Olympia asked in alarm, for it was wearing toward night.

“Oh, yes; I’m detailed to remain with you until you have found out about your kinsfolk.”

In the mellow sunset the three women followed the orderly across the fields strewed with armaments, supplies, and the rough depot paraphernalia of an army at rest. The hospital consisted of a large tent for the slightly hurt, and a few old buildings and a barn for the more serious cases. The search was futile. There were two or three of the Caribees in the place, but they knew nothing of their missing comrades. Indeed, Jack’s detail by Colonel Sherman had effectually cut off all trace of his movements after the battle began.

Mrs. Sprague’s tears were falling softly as the orderly led them to the surgeon’s office. They were there shown the records of all who had been buried on the field. Many, he informed them, sympathetically, had been buried where they fell, in great ditches dug by the sappers. In every case the garments had been stripped from the bodies before burial, so that there was absolutely no means of identification. Most of the wounded had, however, been sent to Richmond with the prisoners. “It would not do,” he added, kindly, “to give up all hope of the lost ones, until they had seen the roster of the prisoners and the wounded in the Richmond prisons and hospitals.”

Quarters were given to them in a tent put at their disposal by the surgeons, and in the long, wakeful hours of the night Olympia heard the guard pacing monotonously before the door. The music of the bugles aroused them at sunrise–a wan, haggard group, sad-eyed and silent. The girl made desperate efforts to cheer the wretched mother, and even privily took Merry to task for giving way before what was as yet but a shadow. ‘Twould be time enough for tears when they found evidence that the stout, vigorous boys had been killed. As they finished the very plain breakfast of half-baked bread, pea-coffee, and eggs, bought by the orderly at an exorbitant rate, he said, good-naturedly:

“The train don’t come till about ten o’clock. If you’d like to see the battle-field, I can get the ambulance and take you over.”

Olympia eagerly assented–anything was preferable to this mute misery of her mother and Merry’s sepulchral struggles to be conversational and tearless. They drove through bewildering numbers of tents, most of them, Olympia’s sharp eyes noted, marked “U.S.A.,” and she reflected, almost angrily, that the chief part of war, after all, was pillage. The men looked shabby, and the uniforms were as varied as a carnival, though by no means so gay. Whenever they crossed a stream, which was not seldom, groups of men were standing in the water to their middle, washing their clothing, very much as Olympia had seen the washer-women on the Continent, in Europe. They were very merry, even boisterous in this unaccustomed work, responding to rough jests by resounding slashes of the tightly wrung garments upon the heads or backs of the unwary wags.

“Why, there must be a million men here,” Merry cried, as the tents stretched for miles, as far as she could see.

“No; not quite a million, I reckon,” the orderly said, proudly; “but we shall have a million when we march on Washington.”

“March on Washington!” Merry gasped, as though it was an official order she had just heard promulgated. “But–but we aren’t ready yet. We–” Then she halted in dismay. Was she giving information to the enemy? Would they instantly make use of it? Ah! she must, at any cost, undo this fatal treason, big with disaster to the republic. “I mean we are not ready yet to put our many million men on the march.”

The orderly laughed. “I reckon your many million will be ready as soon as our one million. You know we have a big country to cover with them. You folks have only Washington to guard and Richmond to take. We have the Mississippi and fifteen hundred miles of coast to guard. Now, this corner is Newmarket, where Johnston waited for his troops on Sunday and led them right along the road we are on–to the pine wood yonder–just north of us. We won’t go through there, because we ain’t making a flank movement,” and he laughed pleasantly. They drove on at a rapid rate as they came upon the southern shelf of the Manassas plateau.

“This,” the orderly said, pointing to a small stone building in a bare and ragged waste of trees, shrubs, and ruined implements of war, “is the Henry House–what is left of it–the key of our position when Jackson formed his stone wall facing toward the northwest, over there where your folks very cleverly flanked us and waited an hour or two, Heaven only knows what for, unless it was to give us time to bring up our re-enforcements. Your officers lay the blame on Burnside and Hunter, who, they declare, just sat still half the day, while Sherman got in behind us and would have captured every man Jack of our fellows, if Johnston hadn’t come up, where I showed you, in the very nick of time.”

The women were looking eagerly at the field of death. It was still as on the day of the battle, save that instead of the thousands of beating hearts, the flaunting flags, and roaring guns, there were countless ridges torn in the sod, as if a plow had run through at random, limbs and trees torn down and whirled across each other, broken wheels, musket stocks and barrels, twisted and sticking, gaunt and eloquent, in the tough, grassy fiber of the earth.

“In this circle of a mile and a half fifty thousand men pelted each other from two o’clock that Sunday morning until four in the afternoon. Up to two o’clock we were on the defensive. We were driven from the broad, smooth road yonder that you see cutting through the trees, northward a mile from here. Jackson alone made a stand; if it hadn’t been for him we should have been prisoners in Washington now, I reckon. You see those men at work? They are picking up lead. We reckon that it takes a ton of lead to kill a man.”

“A ton of lead?” Olympia repeated.

“Yes. You wouldn’t believe that thousands of men can stand in front of each other a whole day and pour lead into each other’s faces, and not one in fifty is hit?”

“Ah!” Olympia commented, thinking that, after all, Jack might not have been hit.

“These are the trenches of the dead. Our dead are not here. They were all taken and sent to friends. There are five hundred of your dead here and near the stone bridge yonder. We lost three hundred killed in the fight.”

“And are there no other marks than this plain board?” Olympia pointed to a rough pine plank, sticking loosely in the ground, with the words painted in lampblack: “85 Yanks. By the Hospital Corps, Bee’s Brigade.”

“That’s all. They were all stripped–no means of identifying them. The sun was very hot; the rain next day made the bodies rot, and the men had to just shovel them in–” “Oh, oh! don’t, pray don’t!” Olympia cried, as her mother tottered against the ambulance.

“I ask your pardon, ladies; I forgot that these are not things for ladies to hear.” He spoke in sincere contrition.

To relieve him Olympia smiled sadly, saying, “Won’t you take us back, please?”

The ambulance drove on into the Warrenton pike, and, if Olympia had known it, within a stone’s-throw of Jack’s last effort, where the cavalry picket came upon him. It was noon when they reached the station. The orderly returned the ambulance to the hospital, brought down the luggage, and the three women made a luncheon of fruit and dry bread, declining the orderly’s invitation to eat at the hospital. The train came on three hours late. It was filled with military men, most of them officers; but so soon as the orderly entered the rear coach, ushering in his charges, two or three young men with official insignia on their collars arose with alacrity and begged the ladies to take the vacant places. At Bristow Station many of the officers got out and a number of civilians entered from the coach ahead and took their places. Mrs. Sprague, worn out by the fatigue of the journey and the strain upon her mind, quite broke down in the hot, ill-ventilated car. There was no water to be had, and Olympia turned inquiringly to the person opposite her, asking:

“Could we possibly get any water–my mother is very much overcome?”

“Certainly, madam. There must be plenty of canteens on the train. I will bring you some in a moment.”

An officer who had been sharing the seat with Merry arose on hearing this and said, kindly:

“Madam, if you will make use of your seat as a couch, perhaps your mother will feel more comfortable reclining. I will get a seat elsewhere.”

Olympia was too much distressed to think of acknowledging this courteous action, but Merry spoke up timidly:

“We are most grateful to you, sir.”

“Oh, don’t mention it. Are you going far?” “Yes, we’re going to Richmond, to–to find our boys, lost in the battle two weeks ago.”

“Oh, you’re from the North.” He was a young man, perhaps thirty, evidently proud of his unsoiled uniform and the glittering insignia of rank on the sleeve and collar.

“Yes, sir; we’re from Acredale, near Warchester,” Merry said, as though Acredale must be known even in this remote place, and that the knowing of it would bring a certain consideration to the travelers.

“Oh, yes, Warchester. I fell in with an officer from there after the battle, a Captain Boone. Do you know him?”

“Oh, dear me, yes. He is from Acredale. He is captain of Company K of the Caribee Regiment–“

“Caribee? Why, yes. I remember that name. We got their flags and sent them to Richmond; we–“

“And, oh, sir, did you take the prisoners? I mean the Caribees–were there many? Oh, dear sir, it is among them our boys were; they were mere boys.”

“Yes, ma’am, there were a good smart lot of them, and as you say all very young. Boone himself can’t be twenty-five.”

“And are they treated well? Do they have care? Of course you did not ask any of their names?” Merry asked eagerly, comforted to be able to talk with some one who knew of the Caribees, for heretofore, of the scores they had questioned, no one had ever heard of the regiment.

“Oh, as to that, ma’am, you know a soldier’s life is hard, and a prisoner’s is a good deal harder. Most of your men are in Castle Thunder–a large tobacco warehouse.” He hesitated, and looked furtively at Olympia administering water to her mother. “Perhaps,” he said, heartily, “if you would put a drop of whisky in the cup it would brace up your mother’s nerves. We find it a good friend down here, when it isn’t an enemy,” he added, smiling as Olympia looked at the proffered flask hesitatingly.

“I assure you, madam,” (Southerners, in the old time at least, imitated the pleasant continental custom of addressing all women by this comprehensive term), “you will be the better for a sip yourself. It was upon that we did most of our fighting the other day, and it is a mighty good brace-up, I assure you.”

But Olympia shook her head, smiling. Her mother had taken a fair dose, and was, as she owned, greatly benefited by it. The young man sat on the arm of the opposite seat, anxious to continue the conversation, but divided in mind. Merry was trying to hide her tears, and kept her head obstinately toward the window. Olympia, with her mother’s head pillowed on her lap, strove to fan a current of air into circulation. She gave the young man a reassuring glance, and he resumed his seat in front of her, beside the distracted Merry.

“You are from Richmond?” Olympia asked as he sat puzzling for a pretext to renew the talk with her.

“Oh, no; I am from Wilmington, but I have kinsfolk in Richmond, I am on General Beauregard’s staff. My name is Ballman–Captain Ballman.”

She vaguely remembered that Vincent Atterbury was on staff duty. Perhaps this young man knew him.

“Do you know a Mr. Atterbury in–in your army?” she asked, blushing foolishly.

“Atterbury–Atterbury–why, yes! I know there is such a man. He is in General Jackson’s forces–whether on the staff or not I can’t say. Stay. I saw his name in _The Whig_ this very day.” He took out the paper and glanced down the columns. “Ah, yes; is this the man?” And he read: “Major Vincent Atterbury, whose wounds were at first pronounced serious, is now at his mother’s country-house on the river. He is doing excellently, and all fears have been removed.”

“Yes, that is he. We know him quite well.” And she turned her head window-ward, with a feeling of confidence in the mission, heretofore so blank and wild. Vincent would aid them. He could bring official intervention to bear, without which Jack might, even though alive and well, be hidden from them. She whispered this confidence to her mother as the train jolted along noisily over the rough road, and, a good deal inspired by it, Mrs. Sprague began to take something like interest in the melancholy country that flew past the window, as if seeking a place to hide its bareness in the blue line of uplands that marked the receding mountain spurs.

The captain was much more potential in providing a supper at the evening station than the orderly, who was looked upon with some suspicion when he told the story of his _proteges_. The zeal of the new Confederates did not extend to aiding the enemy, even though weak women and within the Confederate lines. It was nearly morning when the train finally drew up in the Richmond station, and the captain, with many protestations of being at their service, gave them his army address, and, relinquishing them to the orderly, withdrew. It had been decided that the party should not attempt to find quarters in the hotels, which their escort declared were crowded by the government and the thousands of curious flocking to the city since the battle.

He could, however, he thought, get them plain accommodations with an aunt, who lived a little from the center of the town. They were forced to walk thither, no conveyance being obtainable. After a long delay they were admitted, the widow explaining that she had been a good deal troubled by marauding volunteers. The orderly explained the situation to his kinswoman, and without parley the three ladies were shown into two plain rooms adjoining. They were very prim and clean; the morning air came through the open windows, bearing an almost stupefying odor. It may have been the narcotic influence of the flowers that brought sleep to the three women, for in ten minutes they were at rest as tranquilly as if in the security of Acredale.

CHAPTER XIII.

A COMEDY OF TERRORS.

When Jack, the day after the battle, found himself able to take account of what was going on, he closed his eyes again with a deep groan, believing in a vague glimpse of peaceful rest that his last confused sensation was real–that he was dead. But there were no airy aids of languorous ease to perpetuate or encourage this delusion. Sharp pains racked his head; his right arm burned and twinged as though he had thrust it into pricking flames. Loud voices about, but invisible to him, were swearing and gibing. He was lying on his back, his head on a line with his body. A regular movement, broken by joltings that sent torturing darts through his whole frame, told him without much conjecture that he was in an ambulance. The accent of the voices outside told him that it was a rebel ambulance and not a Northern one he was in. He tried to raise his head to see his companions, but he might as well have been nailed to the cross, so far as pain and helplessness went. Then he lost the thread of his thought. He heard, in a vague, far-off voice, men talking:

“We’ll catch old Abe on our next trip ef we go on like this–eh, Ben?”

“I reckon. I’m jess going to take a furlough now. Hain’t seen my girl fo’ foah months.”

“How much did you pick up?”

“I’ve got five gold watches and right smart o’ shinplasters, I don’t reckon they’ll pass in our parts, but I’m going to trade ’em off with some of these wounded chaps. They’ll give gold for ’em fast enough.”

“I got a heap of gold watches, jackknives, and sech. I don’t know what in the land to do with ’em. Suppose we can sell ’em in Richmond?”

“Yes–but how are we going to get to Richmond? We’re ordered to dump these Yanks at Newmarket and go back. Ef we don’t get to Richmond, our watches ain’t worth a red cent. Jess like’s not old Bory’ll issue an order to turn everything in. I’m blamed if I will!”

“Look yere, Ben, do you see that road off there to the right?”

“Yes, I do, but I don’t see that it’s different from any other road.”

“Don’t you? Well, honey, it’s mitey sight different from all the roads you ever saw. It takes you where you don’t want to go.”

“What do you mean, Bob?”

“I jess mean that ar road goes to Newmarket, where these Yanks are ordered, but we’ve lost it and we shall come out in about an hour and a half at the junction, whar th’ train goes on to Richmond. See?”

“Bob Purvis, you are a general, suah,” and then there followed low, rollicking laughter, mingled with a gurgling as of a liquid swallowed from a flask. “But how’ll we manage at the junction? We can’t go right on the cars? There is some hocus-pocus about everything you do in the army.”

“Oh, jess you keep your eye on your dad, and you’ll see things you never saw afore. The minit them cavalry sneaks left us back thar, I made up my mind I’d skip Newmarket. They’ve gone back to pick up more loot. No one at the junction knows what our orders was. Besides, it’ll be dark when we get thar. The trains’ll be full of our wounded. We’ll slip these Yanks in as if under orders. No one will know but we’re hospital guards on a detail for the wounded. When it is found out we shall be in Richmond, and, if the provost folk get hold of me afore I’ve been home and planted my haul, then I’m a Yank.”

“By mitey, Ben, you are a general, suah.” Then suppressed laughter and the gurgling of the flowing enlivener. Jack blissfully fell into dreams, wherein home things and warlike doings mingled in grotesque medley. Relapses into consciousness followed at he knew not what intervals thereafter. He was conscious of cruel torment and a clumsy transfer into another vehicle, confused sounds of groans, curses, waving lights, and the hissing of escaping steam almost in his very ears. Then the anguish of thundering wheels, until his cracked brain reeled and he was mercifully unconscious. How long? His eyes opened on a clean white wall, flowers hung from the windows in plumy festoons, birds sang in the yellow dazzling sunlight. What could it mean? Was he at home? Surely there was nothing of war in these comfortable surroundings. His left arm was free, there was no one lying near to impede its movement. So it wasn’t a hospital. He took vague note of all this before he tried to lift his arm. He raised his hand to rub his eyes and to assure himself that it was not a cruel delusion. When he took it away, a kind face–the face of a woman–was bending over him.

“You are feeling better, aren’t you, lieutenant?”

“Lieutenant”? Why did she call him lieutenant? Had he been promoted on the battle-field? Was he in the Union lines? Oh, yes; else he would have been in a hospital, with moaning men all about him. He tried to speak. The woman put her finger to her lips, warningly.

“The doctor says you must not speak or be spoken to until you get strong.”

Days passed. He couldn’t tell how many, for he lay, long hours at a time, unconscious, the mental faculties mercifully dead while the wounded ligatures knit themselves anew. His right arm had been cut by a saber-stroke, and a pistol-ball had entered above the shoulder-blade. Prompt attention would have given him recovery in a few days, but the twenty-four hours in a cart and the cars made his condition, for a time, serious.

But now he is visibly stronger, and his nurse brings people into the room to see him. They look at him with wonder and admiration, while the good lady is all in a flutter of delight. He hears himself spoken of always as the “lieutenant,” and hesitates to ask an explanation. The physician comes but seldom, the lady explaining that all the doctors in town are busy in the hospitals. The truth flashed upon him one morning, when his hostess came bursting in to say:

“The provost guard has come to take your name. I don’t know it, for when you were brought here my son only heard you called lieutenant.”

“My name is John Sprague”–Jack lifted himself to his elbow in excitement and disregard of everything–“and my regiment is the–ah!” He fell back, and the frightened dame hurried to him as she saw his changed look and deadly pallor.

“Oh, how careless of me; how unthinking! There, lie perfectly still. I will send the guard away and come back.”

She was gone before he could recover his speech or enough coherence to say what was in his mind. She informed the orderly that the ailing man was John Sprague, a lieutenant in the First Virginia Volunteers, for that was the regiment the hospital guards had named, when, on the night of the arrival, the eager citizens swarmed at the station to take the wounded to their homes, the hospitals being sadly unready. Jack instantly suspected the situation, the conversation in the ambulance coming back to him now distinctly. What should he do? He was in honor bound to undeceive the kind-hearted and unwitting accomplice of the fraud practiced on herself as well as on him. She came in presently with an officer. Jack was not familiar with the rebel insignia, and could not discover his rank or service, but he expected to hear himself denounced as a spy or anything odious.

“Our surgeon has been sent to Manassas, and Dr. Van Ness is come to take care of you in his place,” the matron said, as Jack stared silent and quavering at the new-comer. That gentleman examined the patient, shook his head dubiously and declared high fever at work, and ordered absolute quiet for at least twenty-four hours, when, if he could, he would return. “Continue the prescriptions you have now, Mrs. Raines. All he needs is quiet. The hospital steward will come to dress his wounds as usual.”

Mrs. Raines came in with tea and toast in the evening, and as she spread the napkin on the bed she prattled cheerily.

“I’m so happy to-night. I’ve just received a letter from my son. He’s at Manassas. He’s been promoted to lieutenant from sergeant. It was read at the head of the regiment–for gallant service at the Henry House, where he captured part of a company of Yankees with a squad of cavalry. He’s only twenty-two, and if he lives he may be a general–if those cowardly Yankees will only fight long enough. But I’m afraid they won’t. _The Whig_ says this morning that that beast Lincoln has to keep himself guarded by a regiment of negroes, as the Northern people want to kill him. I hope they won’t, for if they did then they might put some one in his place that has some sense, and then the war would come to an end and we should be cheated in a settlement, for the Yankees are sharper than our big-hearted, generous men. No, sir, no; you mustn’t talk. I’ve promised to keep you quiet, so lie still. I’ll read _The Whig_ to you.”

She ran over the meager dispatches made up of hearsay and speculation–how the North had fallen into a rage with the Washington authorities; how Lincoln’s life wasn’t safe; how the Cabinet had all resigned; how the Democrats had arisen in Congress and in the State Legislatures and demanded negotiations with “President Davis”; how England was drawing up a treaty with the new Confederacy. Then she turned to the local page. She ran over a dozen paragraphs recounting the deeds of well-known Richmond heroes, but these made no impression upon the listener, until she read:

“Major Vincent Atterbury, whose gallantry at the battle of the 21st Richmond is a subject of pride to his friends, was transferred to his country home, on the James, yesterday. He is still very low, but the surgeons declare that home quiet and careful nursing will restore him to his duties in time for the autumn campaign–if the Yankees do not surrender before that time.”

Jack’s eyes were so bright when Mrs. Raines looked at him, as she lowered the sheet, that she arose, exclaiming quickly:

“There, I have brought the fever back! Your eyes are glittering and your cheeks are flushed. No, do not speak.”

She moved precipitately from the room, and Jack sank back with a groan. His danger, if not his difficulties, might be overcome now. He would write to Mrs. Atterbury, and through Vincent arrange for an exchange. But a still deeper trouble had been on his mind. Where were Barney and Nick, and, worse than all, young Dick Perley? If any mishap had befallen that boy, he would shrink from returning to Acredale. And his mother, what must her state of mind be? How many days had passed since the battle? He had no means of knowing. Ah, yes! The paper was there on the stand, where Mrs. Raines had thrown it. He raised himself slowly and seized it. Heavens! Saturday, August 4th? Two weeks since that fatal Sunday! And his mother? Oh, he must find means to write, to telegraph. “Mrs. Raines,” he called, hoarsely, “Mrs. Raines!” She came running to his side in alarm.

“Oh, what has happened? You are worse!”

“I am very comfortable; but, my kind friend, I must–I must let my mother know that I am alive; she will think me dead.”

“That’s what I meant to ask you–just as soon as you seemed able to talk. I would have gladly sent her word and invited her to come here, but I didn’t know the name nor the address. You didn’t have a stitch of clothes when you came except your underwear; the rest had been taken off, the men said, because they were soiled and bloody, and there wasn’t a clew of any sort to your identity, except that you were a lieutenant in a Virginia regiment. I thought we should find out when the provost came, but they have sent to Manassas, and no answer has come back yet.”

“The men who brought me here deceived you, Mrs. Raines. I do not belong to a Virginia regiment; I belong to a New York regiment, and I am a–a–Union soldier.”

“Great Father! A Yankee?” The poor woman sank on the nearest chair, as some one who has been nursing a patient that suddenly turns out to have small-pox or leprosy.

“Yes, Mrs. Raines: if you prefer that name, I’m a Yankee–but we call only New-Englanders Yankees.” He waited for her to speak, but as she sat dumb, helpless, overcome, he continued: “I tried to explain the mistake before, but your kindness cut me off. I can only say that, though you have given me a mother’s care and a Christian’s consideration under a misunderstanding, I trust you will not blame me for willful deception nor regret the goodness you have shown the stranger in your hands.”

“And those men that brought you here–were they Yankees, too?” she asked, her mind dwelling, womanlike, on the least essential factor of the problem in order to keep the grievous fact as far away as possible.

“Oh, no! they were your own people. There was no collusion, I assure you.” Jack almost laughed now, as the dialogue in the ambulance recurred to him, and the adroit use the men had made of their unconscious charges to secure a furlough. “No; I was more amazed than I can say when I came to myself in this charming chamber–a paradise it seemed to me, a home paradise–when your kind face bent over my pillow.”

“It’s a cruel disappointment,” she said, rising and holding the back of the chair as she tilted it toward the bed. “We were so proud of you–so proud to have any one that had fought for our dear State in our own house to nurse, to bring back to life. Every one on the street has some one from the battle, and oh, what will be said of us when people know that we–we–” But here the cruelty of the conclusion came too sharply to her mind, and she walked to the window, sobbing softly.

“I can understand, believe me, Mrs. Raines, and I am going to propose a means to you whereby I shall be taken from here, and your neighbors shall never know that you entertained an enemy unawares, though God knows I don’t see why we should be enemies when the battle is over. If your son were in my condition I should think very hard of my mother if she were not to him what you have been to me.”

“But I can’t believe you’re a Yankee; you were so gentle, so patient in all the dreadful times when the surgeon was cutting and hacking. Oh, I can’t believe it! Oh, please say you are joking–that you wanted to give me a fright. And you have a mother?” She came over near the bed again and stood looking at him dismally, half in doubt, half in perplexed wonder; for Yankee, in her mind, suggested some such monster as the Greeks conjured when the Goths poured into the peninsula, maiming the men and debauching the women. “I said Sprague wasn’t a Virginia name,” she murmered, plaintively, in a last desperate attempt to fortify herself against the worst; “but there’s no telling what names are in Virginia now, since Norfolk has grown so big and folks come in that way from all over the world.”

Jack could scarcely keep a serious face, as this humorous lament displayed the pride of the Dominion and the unconscious Boeotianism of the provincial.

“Now, Mrs. Raines, here is what I propose: Major Atterbury, of whom you read to me, is my nearest friend. We have been college comrades; he has passed weeks at my home, and I have been asked to his, and meant to come this autumn vacation, if the war had not broken out. I will write to his mother, and she will have me removed to her house, and it need never be known that you gave aid and comfort to the enemy.”

“But the Atterburys will never receive you. They were the first to favor secession, when all the rest of us opposed it. To tell you the truth, Mr. Sprague, it is partly because we were abused a good deal for holding back when the secession excitement was first started, that I am so–so anxious about the story getting out that we entertained a Yankee prisoner. My husband is in the service of the government in Norfolk, and my son is in the army. But you know what neighborhood gossip is.”

So, after a friendly talk in which the poor lady cried a great deal and besought Jack’s good-will for her darling William, if ever he were luckless enough to be captured, the note was written and dispatched to the Atterburys, whose city house was near the capital square. The messenger returned a half-hour later, reporting the family out of town; that they had taken the major to their country-place near Williamsburg, on the banks of the James. The messenger had given the letter to the housekeeper, who said that it would go out an hour later with the mail sent daily to the family.

“Williamsburg is two hours’ ride on the train,” Mrs. Raines explained, “and we sha’n’t hear from them until to-morrow.”

Jack said nothing; his mind was on his mother and the misery she must be enduring. He turned restlessly on his pillow that night, and woke feverish in the morning. Mrs. Raines now took as much pains to keep people who called from seeing her hero as she had before put herself out to display the invalid. Even the doctor, calling about nine o’clock, was sent away on some pretext, and the poor lady waited with an anxiety, almost as poignant as Jack’s own, for the response to his note. About noon it came. Mrs. Raines went to the door herself, not daring to trust the colored girl, who had lavished untold pains on Jack’s linen and the manual part of his care. Jack heard low voices in the hallway, then on the stairs, and he knew some one had come.

“Here is Miss Atterbury sent to fetch you, lieutenant,” Mrs. Raines said, now very much relieved, and impressed, too, by the powerful friends her dangerous _protege_ was able to summon so promptly by a line.

“You are Rosalind?” Jack said, smiling at a pair of the brownest and most bewitching eyes fixed soberly on him. “I should have known you if I had met you in the street, although you were a small girl when I saw you last.”

“You needn’t take much credit for that, sir, since Vincent probably had my portrait in all his coat-pockets and his room frescoed with them–it’s a trick of his. So you needn’t pretend that it was family likeness–I know better. Vincent has all the good looks of the family, and I have all the good qualities.”

“That’s why you’ve come to console the afflicted?”

“Yes, duty–you know how disagreeable that is. Vincent declared he would come himself, if I didn’t, and mamma wouldn’t hear of your being moved by servants alone, so I am here. But I give you fair warning that I am a rebel of the most ferocious sort. You shall ride under the ‘bonnie blue flag’ to Rosedale, and you shall salute our flag every morning when it is hoisted.”

“I am the most docile of men and the easiest of invalids. I will ride under Captain Kidd’s flag and salute the standard of the Grand Turk, to be near Vincent just now.”

When Rosalind’s colored aids had placed him in the big family carriage, and he had bidden Mrs. Raines farewell, the young lady resumed: “Ah, I know you! Vincent has told me about your Yankee ways. Not another word, sir. I’ll act as guide, and tell you all we see of note as we go on. There where your eyes are resting now is the Confederate Hall of Independence; that modest house on the corner is President Davis’s. We are going to build him another by and by–after we capture Washington and get our belongings–no–no–you needn’t speak. I know what you want to say. That’s Washington’s monument, and there is our dear old Jefferson. Doesn’t it quicken even your slow Yankee blood to pass the walls that heard Jefferson at his greatest, that held Patrick Henry, that covered Washington? Ah! if you Northern Pharisees were not money-grubbers and souless to everything but the almighty dollar, you would join hands with us in creating our new Confederacy. Yes, sir, you’re my prisoner. We shall see that one Yankee is kept out of mischief–if the war lasts–which is not likely, as your folks are quite cowed by the victory at Bull Run. Wasn’t it a splendid fight? I shall never forgive Vin for not letting me know it was coming off. Vin, you know, is on General Early’s staff. He knew two days before that there was to be a fight, for he started from Winchester to keep the railway clear and lead the troops to the Henry House when they got off the cars. He was in the thickest of the fight, near Professor Jackson–Stonewall, they call him now. He–Vin–had three horses killed, and was made a major on the field by General Joe Johnston. What?—-“

“Please let the carriage stop a moment. I want to absorb that lovely view.”

He pointed to the James, debouching from the hills over which the carriage was slowly rolling. The afternoon sun was behind them; but far, far to the eastward the noble river wound through masses of dark, deep green until it was lost in a glow of shimmering mirage in the low horizon.

“Isn’t it lovely? We shall have a nobler capital city than Washington, with its horrid red streets, its wilderness of bare squares, its interminable distances–“

“Carcassonne,” Jack murmured.

“Carcassonne–what’s that?”

“An exquisite bit of verse and a touching story. I—-“

“There, there–stop. You are talking again. You shall read the poem to me–that is, if it isn’t a glorification of the North.”

“No; Carcassonne was a city of the South.”

“Really–you must not talk. I’m not going to open my lips again until we get to the boat.”

She settled back in her place and took out a book, looking over the top at him from time to time. The motion of the vehicle, the warmth of the day, and the odorous breath of flowers and shrubs gradually dulled his mischievous spirits, and he slept tranquilly until the carriage drew up at the wharf at Harrison’s Landing, whence, taken on a primitive ferry, they in an hour or more arrived at a long wooden pier extending into the river. It was nearly six o’clock when the carriage entered a solemn aisle of pines ending in a labyrinth of oleanders and the tropic-like plants of the South. Then an old-fashioned porticoed mansion came into view, and on signal from the driver a _posse_ of colored servants came trooping out noisily to carry the invalid in. Mrs. Atterbury was on the veranda, and stepped down to the carriage to welcome the guest. She greeted him with the affectionate cordiality of a mother, and asked:

“How have you borne the fatigue? I hope Rosa hasn’t let you talk?”

“If I may speak now it will be to bear testimony that I have been made a mummy since noon. I haven’t been permitted to ask the local habitation or name of the scenic delights that have made the journey a panorama of beauty and my guide a tyrant, to whom, by comparison, Caligula was a tender master!”

“Since you slept most of the way you must have dreamed the beauty, as you certainly have invented the tyrant,” Rosa retorted, as the brawny servants lifted Jack bodily and carried him up the three steps and into the sitting-room.

“Your quarters are next to my son’s, if you think you can endure the constant outbreaks of that locality. We are with him in all but his sleeping hours, so you will do well to reflect before you decide.”

“Oh, I shall insist on being near Vincent. He’s too badly hurt to overcome me in case we are tempted to fight our battles over again.”

“But he has allies here, sir, and you must remember that you are a prisoner of war,” Rosa cried from the landing above, _en route_ to minister to her hero before the Yankee invaded him. Vincent was propped up in the bed with a mass of pillows, and the two friends embraced in college-boy fashion, too much moved for a moment to begin the flood of questions each was eager to ask and answer.

“Before I say a word of anything else, Vint, I want you to do me a great service. It is two weeks since the battle. I am sure my mother can not have any certain information about me. Can you manage any way to get a letter or telegram sent her?”

“Of course I can. Nothing easier. Write your telegram. I will send it under cover to General Early. He will forward it by flag of truce to Washington, and it will be sent North from there.”

But Jack’s letter was never sent, for when the post came from Richmond the next day, Vincent read in the morning paper a surprising personal item:

“‘Among the distinguished arrivals in the city within the week, we have just learned of the presence of Mrs. Sprague, wife of the famous Senator, a contemporary with Clay and Webster. Mrs. Sprague has come to Richmond in search of her son, who was captured or killed on the field near the Henry House. She comes with her daughter under a safeguard from General Johnston, who knew the family when he was at West Point. Mrs. Sprague is stopping with Mrs. Bevan, on Vernon Street, and is under the escort of Private William Bevan of the general headquarters.'”

CHAPTER XIV.

UNDER TWO FLAGS.

That modest paragraph in the morning paper wrought amazing results in the fortunes of many of the people we are interested in. A regiment of cavalry encamped near the outskirts of the city on the line of the Virginia Central had broken camp early in the morning to march northward. One company detailed to bring up the rear was still loitering near the station when the newspapers were thrown off the train and eagerly seized by the men, who bestrewed themselves in groups to hear the news read aloud.

“Here, you Towhead, you’re company clerk; you read so that we can all hear.”

In response to this a stripling, in the most extraordinary costume, came out from the impedimenta of the company with a springy step and consequential air. You wouldn’t have recognized the scapegrace, Dick Perley, in the carnival figure that came forward, for his curling blond hair was closely cropped, his face was smeared with the soilure of pots and pans, and it was evident that the eager warrior had exchanged the weapons of war for the utensils of the company kitchen. He read in a high, clear treble the telegraphic dispatches, the sanguinary editorial ratiocinations, Orphic in their prophetic sententiousness, and then turned to the local columns.

Any one listening to the lad would never have suspected that he was not a Southron. He prolonged the _a’s_ and _o’s_, as the Southern trick is, and imitated to such perfection the pleasant localisms of Virginian pronunciation, that keener critics of speech and accent than these galliard troops would have been deceived. But suddenly his voice breaks, he falls into the clear, distinct enunciation of New York–the only speech in the Union that betrays no sign of locality. He is reading the lines about the distinguished arrivals. Fortunately at the instant there is a blast from the bugles–“Fall in!”–and the men rush to their horses. In twenty minutes the company is clattering out on the Mechanicsville road, and at noon, when the squadron halted for dinner, the company cook had to rely on the clumsy ministrations of his colored aides. “Towhead” had disappeared.

Olympia, after a night of anguish, began the new day with a heavy burden on her mind. Mrs. Sprague was delirious. The physician summoned during the night shook his head gravely. She was suffering from overexertion, heat, and anxiety. He was unable to do more than mitigate her sufferings. He recommended country air and absolute repose. Merry, too, though holding up bravely, gave signs of breaking down. The two women–Olympia and Merry–under the escort of young Bevan, had gone through the prisons, the dreadful Castle Winder, and through the hospitals, with hope dying at every new disappointment. They came across many of the Caribees, and saw a member of Congress, caught on the battle-field, who knew the regiment well.

Jack had been traced to Porter’s lines, then far to the left, where Nick had been told to wait. Nick was among the sweltering mass at Castle Winder, but he could trace the missing no farther. He told of Jack’s persistent valor to the last, and the dreadful moment, when he, Jack, had been separated. Dick he had not seen at all. Olympia made intercession for Nick’s release, but was informed that nothing could be done until a cartel of exchange had been arranged. The Yankee authorities had in the first five months of the war refused to make any arrangement, while the Union forces were capturing the Confederate armies in West Virginia and Missouri. Now that the Confederates held an equal number, they were going to retaliate upon the overconfident North. Olympia placed five hundred dollars at Nick’s disposal in the hands of the commandant to supply the lad with better food than the commissary furnished, and, promising him strenuous aid so soon as she got back to Washington, she resumed the quest for the lost. She had written out an advertisement, to be inserted in all the city papers, and was to visit the offices herself with young Bevan that evening. She had her bonnet on, and was charging Merry how to minister to the ailing mother, when the hostess knocked at the door. “A lady is in the parlor who says she must see Mrs. Sprague immediately.” Olympia followed Mrs. Bevan down tremblingly, far from any anticipation of what was in store for her; rather in the belief that it was some wretched mother from Acredale who had learned of their presence and hoped to get aid for an imprisoned son, husband, or brother. But when she saw the kind, matronly face of Mrs. Raines beaming with the delight of bearing good news, she sank into a chair, saying faintly:

“Did you wish to see me, Mrs.–Mrs.–“

“You are not Mrs. Sprague?”

“No; my mother is very ill. I am Mrs. Sprague’s daughter. Can I–“

“Well, Miss Sprague, I think I can cure your mother. I–“

She arose and walked mysteriously to the door and looked into the hallway.

“I know what the disease is your mother is suffering from.”

She couldn’t resist prolonging the consequence of her mission. All women have the dramatic instinct. All love to intensify the unexpected. But Olympia’s listless manner and touching desolation spurred her on. She put her fingers to her lips warningly, and coming quite near her whispered, as she had seen people do on the stage:

“Don’t make any disturbance; don’t faint. Your brother is alive and well! There, there–I told you.”

Olympia was hugging the astonished woman, who glanced in terror over her shoulder to see that feminine curiosity was not dangerously alert. “You will ruin me,” she whispered, “if you don’t be calm.” Then Olympia suddenly recovered herself, sobbing behind her handkerchief. “He has been at my house two weeks. He left yesterday and is now with Major Atterbury’s family on the James River, near Williamsburg. Miss Atterbury came herself to take him there yesterday morning. I saw your name in _The Examiner_ only an hour ago, and I came at once to relieve the distress I knew you must be suffering.”

Then the kind soul told the story, charging the sister never to reveal the facts. She withdrew very happy and contented, for Olympia had said many tender things; she almost felt that she had done the Confederacy a great service, to have laid so many people under an obligation that might in the future result in something remarkable for the cause.

Olympia’s purpose of breaking the news gradually to the invalid was frustrated by her tell-tale eyes and buoyant movements.

“O Olympia, you have seen John!” she screamed, starting up–“where is he? Oh, where is he? I know you have seen him!” And then there were subdued laughter and tears, and mamma instantly declared her intention of flying to the hero. But there was considerable diplomacy still requisite. Mrs. Raines must not be compromised, and young Bevan must get transportation for them to the Atterburys. It was past noon when the carriage came for them. Olympia had come down-stairs to give Mrs. Bevan final instruction regarding letters and luggage, when a resounding knock came upon the door. Mrs. Bevan opened it herself, and Olympia, standing in the hall, heard a well-known voice, quick, eager, joyous:

“Is Mrs. Sprague, here?”

“O Richard,” Olympia cried, rushing at him–“ah, you darling boy!–Aunt Merry–Aunt Merry! Come–come quick! He is here.” But Aunt Merry at the head of the stairs had heard the voice, and Dick, tearing himself ungallantly from the embrace of beauty, was up the stairs in four leaps and in the arms of the fainting spinster.

“It is Miss Perley’s nephew,” Olympia said, joyously, to the amazed lady of the house, who stood speechless. “We had given up all hope of seeing him, as his name was not on our army list. He ran away to be with my brother, and we felt like murderers, as you may imagine, and are almost as much relieved to find him as our own flesh and blood.”

The subsequent conversation between the matron and the young girl seemed to put the mistress of the house in excellent humor, and when the carriage drove off she kissed all the ladies quite as rapturously as if she had never vowed undying hatred and vengeance upon the Yankee people. In the carriage the prodigal Dick rattled off the story of his adventures. He had come to Company K after Jack had been sent out on the skirmish-line. He had followed in wild despair the direction pointed out to him. He had lost his way until he met Colonel Sherman’s orderlies. They had told him where the company was halted on the banks of the stream.

When he reached the place indicated he learned of Jack’s detail to the extreme right of the army. He dared not set out openly to follow. He ran back in the bushes, out of sight, and then by a _detour_ struck the stream far above to the right. The volleys away to the west guided him, and he tore forward, bruising his flesh and tearing his raiment to tatters. The stream seemed too deep to cross, for a mile or more, but finally, finding that the firing seemed to go swiftly to the southward, he plunged in. The banks on the other side were rugged and precipitous, and he was obliged to push on in the morass that the stream wound through. But nature gave out, and on a sunny slope he sat down to rest. He soon fell into a sound sleep, and when he woke there was noise of men laughing and shouting about him. He started to his feet.

“Hello! buster,” a voice said near him. “What are you doin’ away from yer mammy? Beckon she’ll think the Yanks have got you if you ain’t home for bedtime.”

The man who said this was lying peacefully under a laurel-bush. Others were sprawled about, feasting on the spoil of Union haversacks.

“I knew then that I was in a rebel camp,” Dick continued, “but I wasn’t afraid, because my clothes were not military; and, even if they had been, they were so torn and muddy, no one would have thought of them as a uniform. But, for that matter, a good many of the rebels had blue trousers; and, as for regimentals, there really were none, as we have them. I made believe that I lived in the neighborhood, imitated the Southern twang, and was set to work right away helping the company cook. The firing was still going on very near us, to the south, west, and east. But the men didn’t seem to mind it much. In about a half-hour there was a sudden move.

“A volley was poured into us from the east, and in an instant all the graybacks were in commotion. I heard the officers shout: ‘We are surrounded! Die at your post, men!’ But the men didn’t want to die at their posts, or anywhere else, but made off like frightened rabbits. In a few minutes we were all marching between two lines of Richardson’s Union brigade. I had no trouble in stepping out, and then I pushed on in Jack’s direction. But I could not find him when I got to Hunter’s headquarters. An orderly remembered seeing him, or rather seeing the men that brought the good news that Sherman was on the rebel side of the stone bridge early in the battle. There I found an orderly of Franklin’s, who had seen two men I described, sent off to the right to picket, until the cavalry could be sent there. I came upon Nick Marsh near the general’s headquarters, and he told me the direction the others had gone, but urged me to remain with him–as Jack would surely be back there, horsemen having ridden out in that direction to relieve him. I don’t know how far I went, but it must have been a mile.

“There I had to lie in the bushes, for two columns of troops were coming and going, the flying fellows that Sherman had routed near the stone bridge and the re-enforcements that were tearing up from the Manassas Railway. The men coming were laughing and singing as they ran. The men flying were silent, and seemed too frightened to notice the forces coming to their support. I broke out of the bushes and ran toward the line of thick trees that seemed to mark the course of the river. As I came out on a deep sandy road I ran right into troops, halting. There were great cheering and hurrah; then a cavalcade of civilians came through the rushing ranks at a gallop. ‘Hurrah for President Davis! Hip, hip, hurrah!’ I saw him. He was riding a splendid gray horse, and as the men broke into shouts he raised his hat and bowed right and left. He was stopped for a few minutes just in front of where I stood, or, rather, I ran to where he halted. There were long trains of wounded filing down the road, and men without guns, knapsacks, or side-arms, breaking through the bushes on all sides.

“‘They’ve routed us, Mr. President,’ a wounded officer cried, as the stretcher upon which he was lying passed near Jeff Davis.

“‘What part of the field are you from?’ Davis asked, huskily.

“‘Bartow’s brigade, stone bridge. They’ve captured all our guns, and are pouring down on the fords. You will be in danger Mr. President, if you continue northward a hundred yards.’

“Sure enough, there was a mighty cheer, hardly a half-mile to the north of us, and clouds of dust arose in the air. Davis watched the movement through his glass, and, turning to a horseman at his side, cried, exultantly:

“‘The breeze is from the northwest; that dust is going toward the Warrenton Pike. Johnston has got up in time; we’ve won the day!’

“With this he put spurs to his horse, and the squadron halted on the road set off at a wild gallop. The words of the President were repeated from man to man, and then a mighty shout broke out. It seemed to clip the leaves from the trees, as I saw them cut, an hour or two before, by the swarming volleys of musketry. A horseman suddenly broke from a path just behind where I was.

“‘Is President Davis here?’ he asked, riding close to me, but not halting.

“‘He has just ridden off yonder.’ I pointed toward the cloud of dust east and north of us.

“‘Split your throats, boys! General Beauregard has just sent me to the President to welcome him with the news that the Yankees are licked and flying in all directions! Not a man of them can escape. General Longstreet is on their rear at Centreville.’

“There were deafening, crazy shouts; hats, canteens, even muskets, were flung in the air, and the wounded, lying on the ground, were struck by some of these things as they fell, in a cloud, about them. The shouts grew louder and louder, they rose and fell, far, far away right and left. Everybody embraced everybody else. Men who had been limping and despondent before broke into wild dances of joy. Everybody wanted to go toward the field of battle now, but a provost guard filed down the road presently, and in a few minutes I saw a sight that made tears of rage and shame blind me. Whole regiments of blue-coats came at a quick-step through the dusty roadway, the rebel guards prodding them brutally with their bayonets. The fellows near me, who had been running from the fight, set up insulting cheers and cat-calls.

“‘Did you’ns leave a lock of your hair with old Mas’r Lincoln?’

“‘Come down to Dixie to marry niggers, have ye?’ and scores of taunts more insulting and obscene. Our men never answered. They were worn and dusty. They had no weapons, of course, for the first thing the rebels did was to search every man, take his money, watch, studs, even his coat and shoes, when they were better than their own. Hundreds of our men were in their stocking-feet, or, rather, in their bare feet, as they tramped wearily through the burning sand and twisted roots. I heard one of the rebels near me, an officer, say that the prisoners were all going to the junction to take the cars. President Davis had ordered that they should be marched through the streets of Richmond to show the people of the capital the extent of the victory. Then the thought flashed into my head that if our army had been captured, my best chance of finding Jack would be to follow to Richmond and watch the blue-coats. I easily slipped among the prisoners, came to the city and saw every man that went to Castle Winder. But no one that I knew was among them, and I made up my mind that Jack had escaped. I saw Wesley Boone’s father and sister at the Spottswood House yesterday, but I was too late to catch them, and, when I asked the clerk at the desk, be said they had taken quarters in the town–he didn’t know where.”

“That’s a fact,” Olympia exclaimed; “they left Washington before us. I wonder if they found Wesley?”

“I don’t know,” Dick continued, “The officers were brought in a gang by themselves, and I didn’t see them. Well, I hung about the town, visiting all the places I thought it likely Jack might be, and then I joined a cavalry company that belonged to Early’s brigade, at Manassas. I was going there with them this morning to get back to our lines and find Jack, when I saw the paragraph in _The Examiner_, telling of your coming and whereabouts.”

CHAPTER XV.

ROSEDALE.

“What an intrepid young brave you are, Dick!” Olympia cried, as the artless narrative came to an end.

“What a cruel boy, to leave his family and–and–run into such dreadful danger!” Merry expostulated.

“What a devoted boy, to risk his life and liberty for our poor Jack!” Mrs. Sprague said, bending forward to stroke the tow-head. The carriage passed down the same road that Jack had gone the day before, whistling sarcasms at his keeper. At Harrison’s Landing there was a delay of several hours, and the impatient party wandered on the shores of the majestic James–glittering, like a sylvan lake, in its rich border of woodland. The sun was too hot to permit of the excursion Dick suggested, and late in the afternoon the wheezy ferry carried them down the lake-like stream. On every hand there were signs of peace–not a fort, not a breastwork gave token that this was in a few months to be the shambles of mighty armies, the anchorage of that new wonder, the iron battle-ship; the scene of McClellan’s miraculous victory at Malvern, of Grant’s slaughtering grapplings with rebellion at bay, of Butler’s comic joustings, and the last desperate onslaughts of Hancock’s legions. The air, tempered by the faint flavor of salt in the water, filled the travelers with an intoxicating vigor, lent strength to their jaded forces, which, while tense with expectation, could not wholly resist the delicious aroma, the lovely outlines of primeval forest, the melody of strange birds, startled along the shore by the wheezy puffing of the ferry. There were cries of admiring delight as the carriage ran from the long wooden pier into the dim arcade of sycamore and pine, through which the road wound, all the way to Rosedale. Then they emerged into a gentle, rolling, upland, where cultivated fields spread far into the horizon, and in the distance a dense grove, which proved to be the park about the house. The coming of the carriage was a signal to a swarm of small black urchins to scramble, grinning and delighted, to the wide lawn. There was no need to sound the great knocker; no need to explain, when Rosalind, hurrying to the door, saw Olympia emerging from the vehicle. They had not seen each other in four years, but they were in each other’s arms–laughing, sobbing–exclaiming:

“How did you know? When did you come?”

“Jack, Jack! Where is he? How is he?”

“Jack’s able to eat,” Rosa cried, darting down to embrace Mrs. Sprague, and starting with a little cry of wonder as Aunt Merry exclaimed, timidly:

“We’re all here. You’ve captured the best part of Acredale, though you haven’t got Washington yet.”

“Why, how delightful! We shall think it is Acredale,” Rosa cried, welcoming the blushing lady. “And–I should say, if he were not so much like–like ‘we uns,’ that this was my old friend, the naughty Richard,” she said, welcoming the blushing youth cordially. (Dick avowed afterward, in confidence to Jack, that she would have kissed him if he hadn’t held back, remembering his unkempt condition.) Mamma and Olympia were shown up to the door of Jack’s room, where Rosalind very discreetly left them, to introduce the other guests to Mrs. Atterbury, attracted to the place by the unwonted sounds. When presently the visitors were shown into Vincent’s room, Jack called out to them to come and see valor conquered by love; and, when they entered, mamma was brushing her eyes furtively, while she still held Jack’s unwounded hand under the counterpane. Master Dick excited the maternal alarm by throwing himself rapturously on the wounded hero and giving him the kiss he had denied Rosalind. Indeed, he showered kisses on the abashed hero, whose eyes were suspiciously sparkling at the evidence of the boy’s delight. He established himself in Jack’s room, and no urging, prayer, or reproof could induce him to quit his hero’s sight.

“I lost him once,” he said, doggedly, “and I’m not going to lose him again. Where he goes, I’m going; where he stays, I’ll stay–sha’n’t I, Jack?”

“You shall, indeed, my dauntless Orestes; you shall share my fortunes, whatever they be.”

He insisted on a cot in the room, and there, during the convalescence of his idol, he persisted in sleeping–ruling all who had to do with the invalid in his own capricious humor, hardly excepting Mrs. Sprague, whom he tolerated with some impatience. Letters were dispatched northward to relieve the anxiety of Pliny and Phemie, as well as the Marshes. But it hung heavily on Jack’s heart that no trace of Barney had been found. Advertisements were sent to the Richmond papers, and he waited in restless impatience for some sign of the kind lad’s well-being.

“Well, Jack, this isn’t much like the pomp and circumstance of glorious war,” Olympia cried, the next morning, coming in from an excursion about the “plantation,” as she insisted on calling the estate, attended by Merry, Rosa, and Dick. “I never saw such foliage! The roses are as large as sunflowers, and there are whole fields of them!”

“Yes; I believe the Atterburys make merchandise of them.”

“But who buys them about here? They seem to grow wild–as fine in form and color as our hot-house varieties. Surely they are not bought by the colored people, and there seems to be no one else–no other inhabitants, I mean.”

“Oh, no; they are shipped North in the season for them; but I don’t think the family has paid much attention to that branch of the business of late years. Their revenues come from tobacco and cotton. Their cotton-fields are in South Carolina and along the Atlantic coast.”

“And are these colored people all slaves?” Her voice sank to a whisper, for Vincent’s door was ajar.

“Yes, every man jack of them. Did you ever see such merry rogues? They laugh and sing half the night, and sing and work half the day.”

“They don’t seem unhappy, that’s a fact,” Olympia said, reflectively, “but I should think ownership in flesh and blood would harden people; and yet the Atterburys are very kind and gentle. I saw tears in Mrs. Atterbury’s eyes, yesterday, when mamma was sitting here with you.”

“Yes,” Jack said, unconsciously, “women enjoy crying–“

“You insufferable braggart, how dare you talk like that? Pray, what do you know about women’s likes and dislikes?”

“Oh, I beg pardon, Polly; I’m sure I didn’t mean anything–I was taking the minor for the major. All women like babies; babies pass most of their time crying; therefore women like crying.”

“Well, if that is the sum of your college training, it is a good thing the war came–“

“What about the war? No treason in Rosedale, remember!” Vincent shouted from the next room. “You pledged me that when you talked war you would talk in open assembly.” The voice neared the open doorway as he spoke. The servant had moved the invalid’s cot, where Vincent could look in on Jack.

“There was really no war talk, Vint, except such war as women always raise, contention–“

“I object, Jack, to your generalization,” Olympia retorted. “It is a habit of boyishness and immaturity.–He said a moment ago” (she turned to Vincent) “that women loved crying, and then sneaked out by a very shallow evasion.”

“I’ll leave it to Vint: All women love babies; babies do nothing but cry; therefore, women love crying; there couldn’t be a syllogism more irrefutable.”

“Unless it be that all women love liars,” Vincent ventured, jocosely.

“How do you prove that?”

“All men are liars; women love men; therefore–“

“Oh, pshaw! you have to assume in that premise. I don’t in mine. It is notorious that women love babies, while you have only the spiteful saying of a very uncertain old prophet for your major–“

“Whose major?” Rosa asked, appearing suddenly. “I’ll have you to know, sir, that this major is mamma’s, and no one else can have, hold, or make eyes at him.”

“It was the major in logic we were making free with,” Jack mumbled, laughing. “I hope logic isn’t a heresy in your new Confederacy, as religion was in the French Constitution of ’93?”

Rosa looked at Olympia, a little perplexed, and, seating herself on the cot with Vincent, where she could caress him furtively, said, with piquant deliberation:

“I don’t know about logic, but we’ve got everything needed to make us happy in the Montgomery Constitution.”

“Have you read it?” Jack asked, innocently.

“How insulting! Of course I have. I read it the very first thing when it appeared in the newspapers.”

“Catch our Northern women doing that!” Jack interjected, loftily. “There is my learned sister, she doesn’t know the Constitution from Plato’s Dialogues.”

“Indeed, I do not; nor do I know Plato’s Dialogues,” Olympia returned, quite at ease in this state of ignorance.

“Wherein does the Montgomery Constitution differ from the old one?” Jack asked, looking at Vincent.

“I’m blessed if I know. I’ve read neither. I did read the Declaration of Independence once at a Fourth-of-July barbecue. I always thought that was the Constitution. Indeed, every fellow about here does! You know in the South the women do all the thinking for the men. Rosa keeps my political conscience.”

“Well, then, Lord High Chancellor, tell us the vital articles in the Montgomery document that have inspired you to arm Mars for the conflict, plunge millions into strife and thousands into hades, as Socrates would have said, employing his method?” Jack continued derisively.

“Our Constitution assures us the eternal right to own our own property.”

“Slaves?”

“Yes.”

“No one denied you that right, so far as the law went, under the old; it was only the justice, the humanity, that was questioned. The right would have endured a hundred years, perhaps forever, if you had kept still–“

“Come, Jack, I won’t listen to politics,” Olympia cried, with a warning look.

“No, the time for talk is past; it is battle, and God defend the right!” Rosa said, solemnly.

“And you may be sure he will,” Jack added, softly, as though to himself.

“But we’ve got far away from the crying and the babies,” Vincent began, when Jack interrupted, fervently:

“Thank Heaven!”

“You monster!” the two girls cried in a breath.

“No, I can’t conceive a sillier paradox than ‘A babe in the house is a well-spring of joy.’ A woman must have written it first. Now, my idea of perfect happiness for a house is to have two wounded warriors like Vincent and me, tractable, amiable, always ready to join in rational conversation and make love if necessary, providing we’re encouraged.”

“Really, Olympia, your Northern men are not what I fancied,” Rosa cried, with a laugh.

“What did you fancy them?”

“Oh, ever so different, from this–this saucy fellow–modest, timid, shy; needing ever so much encouragement to–to–“

“Claim their due?” Jack added, slyly.

“Well, there is one that doesn’t require much encouragement to claim everything that comes in his way,” Rosa retorts, and Olympia adds:

“And to spare my feelings you won’t name him now.”

“Exactly,” said Rosa.

“How touching!” exclaimed Vincent.

“I left all my blood to enrich your soil, or I’d blush,” replied Jack.

“Oh, no; it won’t enrich the soil; it will bring out a crop of Johnny Jump-ups, a weed that we don’t relish in the South,” retorted Rosa.

“Ah, Jack, you’re hit there!–Rosa, I’m proud of you. This odious Yankee needs combing down; he ran over us so long at college that he is conceited in his own impudence,” and Vincent exploded in shouts of laughter.

“I fear you’re not a botanist, Miss Rosa. It’s ‘Jack in the pulpit’ that will spring from Northern blood, and they’ll preach such truths that the very herbage will bring the lesson of liberty and toleration to you.”

“What is this very serious discussion, my children?” Mrs. Atterbury said, beaming sweetly upon the group. “I couldn’t imagine what had started Vincent in such boisterous laughter; and now, that I come, Mr. Jack is as serious as we were at school when Madame Clarice told us of our sins.”

“Jack was telling his, mamma, and that is still more serious than to hear one’s own,” Vincent said, grinning at the moralist.

“But, to be serious a moment, I have written to my old friend General Robert Lee, of Arlington, about Miss Perley. I know that he will grant her permission to take Richard home with her, and the question now is whether it is safe to let them go together alone?” Mrs. Atterbury addressed the question to Olympia, making no account of Jack.

“Oh, let us leave the decision until you get General Lee’s answer. If they get the message in Acredale that Dick is safe and sound, I don’t see why they need go back before we do. I shall be able to travel in a few weeks. If the roads were not so rickety I wouldn’t be afraid to set out now,” Jack answered.

“Impossible! You can’t leave for a month yet, if then,” Vincent proclaimed, authoritatively. “I know what gunshot wounds are: you think they are healed, and begin fooling about, when you find yourself laid up worse than ever. There’s no hurry. The campaign can’t begin before October. I’m as anxious to be back as you are, but I don’t mean to stir before October. Perhaps you think it will be dull here? Just wait until you are strong enough to knock about a bit; we shall have royal rides. We’ll go to Williamsburg and see the oldest college in the country. We’ll go down the James, and you shall see some of the richest lands in the world. We’ll get a lot of fellows out from Richmond and have our regular barbecue in September. We wind up the season here every year with a grand dance, and Olympia shall lead the Queen Anne minuet with mamma’s kinsman, General Lee, who is the President’s chief of staff.”

“This doesn’t sound much like soldiering,” Jack said, dreamily.

“No. When in the field, let us fight; when at home, let us be merry.”

“A very proper sentiment, young men. We want you to be very merry, for you must remember the time comes when we can’t be anything but sad–when you are away and the night of doubt settles upon our weak women’s hearts.” It was Mrs. Atterbury who spoke, and the sentence seemed to bring silence upon the group.

Meanwhile, all the inquiries set on foot through the agency of the Atterburys failed to bring any tidings of Barney Moore. It suddenly occurred to Jack that the poor fellow was masquerading as a rebel in the bosom of some eager patriot like Mrs. Raines and he reluctantly consented to let Dick go to Richmond to investigate. Perhaps Mrs. Raines might know where the wounded men were taken that had come with him. Some of the stragglers could at least be found. The advertisement asking information concerning a wounded man arriving in Richmond with himself was kept in all the journals. But Merry wouldn’t consent to let Dick go on the dangerous quest without her. She would never dare face her sisters if any mishap came to the lad, and though Vincent put him under the care of an experienced overseer, and ordered the town-house to be opened for his entertainment, the timorous aunt was immovable.

“You must go and call on the President, Miss Merry. He receives Thursdays at the State House. Then you’ll see a really great man in authority, not the backwoods clowns that have brought this country into ridicule–such a man as Virginia used to give the people for President,” Rosa said in the tone a lady of Louis XVIII’s court might have used to an adherent of the Bonapartes.

“Ah, Rosa, we saw a gentle, tender-hearted man in Washington–the very ideal of a people’s father. No one else can ever be President to me while he lives,” Olympia said, seriously.

“Lincoln?” Rosa asked, a little disdainfully.

“Yes, Abraham Lincoln. We have all misunderstood him. Oh if you could have seen him as I saw him–so patient, so considerate: the sorrows of the nation in his heart and its burdens on his shoulders; but confident, calm, serene, with the benignant humility of a man sent by God,” Olympia added almost reverently. “It was he who came to our aid and ordered the rules to be broken that our mother might seek Jack.”

Rosa was about to retort, but a warning glance from Vincent checked her, and she said nothing.

“I say, Dick, don’t try to capture Jeff Davis or blow up the Confederate Congress, or any other of the casual master strokes that may enter your wild head. Remember that we have given double hostages to the enemy. We have accepted their hospitality, and we have made ourselves their guests,” Jack said, half seriously, as the young Hotspur wrung his hand in a tearful embrace.

“Above all, remember, Mr. Yankee, that you are in a certain sense a civilian now; you must not compromise us by free speech in Richmond,” Rosa added.

“Ah, I know very well there’s none of that in the South: you folks object to free speech; they killed poor old Brown for it; that’s what you made war for, to silence free speech,” Dick cried hotly, while Merry pinched his arm in terror.

Dick began his campaign in the morning with longheaded address. He visited the prison under ample powers from General Lee–procured though Vincent’s mediation. There were a score of the Caribees in Castle Winder, and to these the boy came as a good fairy in the tale. For he distributed money, tobacco, and other things, which enabled the unfortunates to beguile the tedious hours of confinement. The prisoners were crowded like cattle in the immense warehouse in squads of a hundred or more. They had blankets to stretch on the floor for beds, a general basin to wash in, and for some time amused themselves watching through the barred windows the crowds outside that flocked to the place to see the Yankees, and, when not checked by the guards, to revile and taunt them.

Dick was enraged to see how contentedly the men bore the irksome confinement, the meager food, and harsh peremptoriness of the beardless boys set over them as guards. Most of the prisoners passed the time in cards, playing for buttons, trinkets, or what not that formed their scanty possessions. Dick learned that all the commissioned officers of the company with Wesley Boone had been wounded or killed in the charge near the stone bridge. Wesley had been with the prisoners at first. He had been struck on the head, and was in a raging fever when his father and sister came to the prison to take him away. No one could tell where he was now, but Dick knew that he must be in the city, since there were no exchanges, the Confederates allowing no one to leave the lines except women with the dead, or those who came from the North on special permits.

Then he visited the provost headquarters, and was shown the complete list of names recorded in the books there; but Barney’s was not among them. At the Spottswood Hotel, the day after his coming, he met Elisha Boone, haggard, depressed, almost despairing. Dick had no love for the hard-headed plutocrat, but he couldn’t resist making himself known.

“How d’ye do, Mr. Boone? I hope Wesley is coming on well, sir.”

Boone brought his wandering eyes down to the stripling in dull amazement.

“Why, where on earth do you come from? How is it you are free and allowed in the streets?”

“Oh, I am a privileged person, sir. I am looking up Company K. You haven’t heard anything of young Moore, Barney, who lives on the Callao road south of Acredale?”

“No, my mind has been taken up with my son”; his voice grew softer. “He is in a very bad way, and the worst is there is no decent doctor to be got here for love or money; all the capable ones are in the army, and those that are here refuse to take any interest in a Yankee.”

The father’s grief and the unhappy situation of his whilom enemy touched the lad; forgetting Jack’s and Vincent’s warning, Dick said, impulsively:

“Oh, I can get him a good doctor. We have friends here.” He knew, the moment he had spoken the words, that he had been imprudent–how imprudent the sudden, suspicious gleam in Boone’s eye at once admonished him.

“Friends here? Union men have no friends here. There are men here with, whom I have done business for years, men that owe prosperity to me, but when I called on them they almost insulted me. If you have friends, you must have sympathies that they appreciate.”

Dick knew what this meant. To be a Democrat had been, in Acredale, to be charged with secret leanings to rebellion. He restrained his wrath manfully, and said, simply:

“An old college friend of Jack’s has been very kind to us.”

“Us? I take it you mean the Spragues. They are stopping with Jeff Davis, I suppose? It’s the least he could do for allies so steadfast.”

“You shouldn’t talk that way, sir. Every man in the Caribees, except old Oswald’s gang, is a Democrat, but they are for the country before party.”

“Yes, yes, it may be so–but, the North don’t think that way. Well, I’m going to Washington to see if I can’t get my boy out of this infernal place, where a man can’t even get shaved decently.”

“And Miss Kate, Mr. Boone, where is she?”

“She is nursing Wesley, poor girl. She is having a harder trial than any of us; for these devilish women fairly push into the sick-room to abuse the North and berate the soldiers that fought at Manassas.”

“I should like to call on Wesley–if you don’t mind,” Dick said, hesitatingly.

“I shall be only too glad; and I’ll tell you what it is, Richard, if you’ll make use of your friends here, to get Kate and Wesley some comforts, some consideration, I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll see that you do not have to wait long for a commission, and I’ll pay you any reasonable sum so soon as you get back North.”

Dick restrained his anger under this insulting blow, perceiving, even in the hotness of his wrath, that the other was unconscious of the double ignominy implied in dealing with soldiers’ rewards as personal bribes, and proffering money for common brotherly offices. It was only when Jack commended his astuteness, afterward, that Dick realized the adroitness of his own diplomacy.

“Thank you, Mr. Boone. I shouldn’t care for promotion that I didn’t win in war; and, as for money, I shall have enough when I need it. But any man in the Caribees shall have my help. Under the flag every man is a friend.”

“True. Yes; you are quite right. Kate will be very glad to see you.”

They walked along, neither disposed to talk after this narrow shave from a quarrel. Boone led the way to the northern outskirts of the city, until they reached a dull-brown frame building, back some distance from the street. A colored woman, with a flaming turban on her head, opened the door as she saw them coming up the trim walk lined with shells and gay with poppies, bergamot, asters, and heliotrope.

“This woman is a slave. She belongs to the proprietor of the hotel who refused to receive Wesley. It was a great concession to let him come here, they told me. But the poor boy might as well be in a Michigan logging camp, for all the care he can get. But I’m mighty glad I met you. I know you can help Kate while I am gone. I hated to leave her, but I can do nothing here, and unless Wesley is removed he will never leave this cussed town alive. I sha’n’t be gone more than ten days.”

Kate had been called by the turbaned mistress, and came into the room with a little shriek of pleasure.

“O, Richard, what a delightful surprise! Have you seen your aunt? Ah! I am so glad; she must be so relieved! And Mr. Sprague–have they found him?”

Dick retailed as much of the story as he thought safe, but he had to say that the Spragues were all with the Atterburys in the country.

“How providential! Ah, if our poor Wesley could find some such friends! He is very low. He recognizes no one. Unless papa can get leave to take him North–I am afraid of the worst. Indeed, I doubt whether he could stand so long a journey. You must stay the day with us. I am so lonely, and I dread being more lonely still when papa leaves this evening.”

Dick remained until late in the afternoon, sending word to Merry, who came promptly to the aid of the afflicted. The next day Dick left his aunt at the cottage with Kate, and warning them that he should be gone all day, and perhaps not see them until the next morning, he set off for Rosedale, where he told Jack Kate’s plight. Vincent heard the story, too, and when it was ended he said, decisively:

“Jack, we must send for them. It would never do to have the story told in Acredale that you had found friends in the South–because you are a Democrat, and Boone was thrust into negro quarters because he is an abolitionist.”

It was the very thought on Jack’s mind, and straightway the carriage was made ready, with ample pillows and what not. Dick set out in great state, filled with the importance of his mission and the glory of Jack’s cordial praises. He was to stop on the way through town and carry the Atterbury’s family physician to direct the removal. When he appeared before Kate, with Mrs. Atterbury’s commands that she and her brother should make Rosedale their home until the invalid could be removed North, the poor girl broke down in the sudden sense of relief–the certainty of salvation to the slowly dying brother. The physician spent many hours redressing the wounds. Gangrene had begun to eat away the flesh of the head above the temple, and poor Wesley was unrecognizable. He was quite unconscious of the burning bromine and the clipping of flesh that the skillful hand of the practitioner carried on. When the little group started on the long journey, the invalid looked more like himself than he had since Kate found him. The drive lasted many hours. Wesley was stretched in an ambulance, Kate sitting on the seat with the driver, the physician and Dick following in the carriage. Merry went back to the city house, where her nephew was to return as soon as Wesley had been delivered at Rosedale. Her charge placed in the hands of the kind hostess, Mrs. Atterbury, Kate broke down. She had borne up while her head and heart alone stood between her brother and death; but now, relieved of the strain, she fell into an alarming fever. A Williamsburg veteran, who had practiced in that ancient college town, since the early days of the century, took the Richmond surgeon’s place, and the gay summer house became, for the time, a hospital.

Meanwhile the rebel provost-marshal had simplified Dick’s task a good deal. An order was issued that all houses where wounded or ailing men were lying should signalize the fact by a yellow flag or ribbon, attached to the front in a conspicuous place. Thus directed, Dick walked street after street, asking to see the wounded; and the fourth day, coming to a residence, rather handsomer than the others on the street, not two blocks from Mrs. Raines, Jack’s Samaritan, he found a wasted figure, with bandaged head and unmeaning eyes, that he recognized as Barney.

“We haven’t been able to get any clew as to his name or regiment. The guards at the station said he belonged to the Twelfth Virginia, but none of the members of that body in the city recognize him. You know him?”

“Yes. He is of my regiment,” Dick said, neglecting to mention the regiment. “I will send word to his friends at once and have him removed.”

“Oh, we are proud and happy to have him here. Our only anxiety was lest he should die and his family remain in ignorance. But, now that you identify him, we hope that we may be permitted to keep him until his recovery.”

It was a stately matron who spoke with such a manner, as Dick thought, must be the mark of nobility in other lands. He learned, with surprise, that the Atterbury physician was ministering to Barney, though there was nothing strange in that, since the doctor was the favorite practitioner of the well-to-do in the city. That night he wrote to Jack, asking instructions, and the next day received a note, written by Olympia, advising that Barney be left with his present hosts until he recovered consciousness; that by that time Vincent would be able to come up to town and explain matters to the deluded family. The better to carry out this plan, Dick was bidden to return to Rosedale, and thus, six weeks after the battle and dispersion, all our Acredale personages, by the strange chances of war, were assembled within sight of the rebel capital, and, though in the hands of friends, as absolutely cut off from their home and duties as if they had been captured in a combat with the Indians.

CHAPTER XVI.

A MASQUE IN ARCADY.

In the latter days of September, the life at Rosedale was but a faint reminder of the hospital it had seemed in August. The young men were able to take part in all the simple gayeties devised by Rosa to make the time pass agreeably. Wesley was still subject to dizziness if exposed to the sun, but Jack and Vincent were robust as lumbermen. Mrs. Sprague and Merry sighed wearily in the seclusion of their chambers for the Northern homeside, but they banished all signs of discontent before their warm-hearted hosts. There was as yet no exchange arranged between the hostile Cabinets of Richmond and Washington. Even Boone’s potent influence among the magnates of his party had not served him to effect Wesley’s release nor enabled him to return to watch over the boy’s fortunes. There was no one at Rosedale sorry for the latter calamity outside of Wesley and Kate. I believe even she was secretly not heart-broken, for she knew that her father would be antipathetic to the outspoken ladies of Rosedale.

There had been an almost total suspension of military movements East and West. Both sides were straining every resource to bring drilled armies into the field, when the decisive blow fell. In his drives and walks about the James and Williamsburg, Jack saw that the country was stripped of the white male population. The negroes carried on all the domestic concerns of the land. In these excursions, too, he marked, with a keen military instinct, the points of defense General Magruder, who commanded the department, had left untouched. He wondered if the Union arms would ever get as far down as this. If they did, and he were of the force, he would like to have a cavalry regiment to lead! Vincent was to rejoin his command at Manassas in October. Jack looked forward to the event with the most dismal discontent. To be tied up here, far from his companions; to seem to enjoy ease, when his regiment was indurating itself by drills, marches, and the rough life of the soldier for the great work it was to do, maddened him.

“I give you fair warning, Vint, if an exchange isn’t arranged before you leave here, I shall cut stick: the best way I can.”

“Good! How will you manage? It’s a long pull between here and our front at Manassas. How will you work it? Just as soon as you quit the shelter of Rosedale, you are a suspect. Even the negroes will halt you. If you should make for Fortress Monroe, you have all of Magruder’s army to get through. You would surely be caught in the act, and then I could do nothing for you. You would be sent to Castle Winder, and that isn’t a very comfortable billet.”

Some hint of Jack’s discontent, or rather of his vague dream of flight, came into Dick’s busy head, and when one day they were tramping down by the James together, he said, owlishly:

“I say, Jack, when Vincent goes, let us clear out!”

“I say yes, with all my heart, but how can it be done? We are more than forty miles from the nearest Union lines. Whole armies are between us. Any white man found on the highway is questioned, and if he can’t give a clear account of himself is sent to the provost prison. You remember the other day, when we left the rest to go through the swamp road near Williamsburg, we were hailed by a patrol, and if Vincent hadn’t been within reach we would have been sent to the provost prison. Even the negroes act as guards.”

“Don’t be too sure of that. I’ve been talking to some of them. They are ‘fraid as sin of the overseers, but you notice they shut up all the negroes in their own quarters at night, don’t you? If they were all right, why should they do that?”

“Good heavens! you haven’t been trying to make an uprising among the Rosedale servants, Dick? Don’t you know that no end of ours could justify that? These people have been like brothers–like our own family to us. It would be infamous–infamous without power in the language for comparison–if we should requite their humanity by stirring up servile strife. I should be the first to take arms against the slaves in such revolt, and give my life rather than be instrumental in bringing misery upon the Atterburys.”

“Oh, keep your powder dry, Jack! I never dreamed of stirring ’em up. What I mean is, that they are all restless and uneasy. They have an idea that ‘Massa Linculm’ is coming down with a big army to set them free. Many of them want to fly to meet this army. Many, too, would almost rather die than leave their mistress. None of them–but the very bad ones–could be induced under any circumstances to lift their hands against the family or its property.”

“I should hope not–at least through our instrumentality. The time must come when they will leave the family, for the one call only and in one way; that is, by cutting out slavery root and branch. However, that’s for the politicians to manage; all we have to do is to stand by the colors and fight.”

“I don’t see much chance of standing by the colors here,” Dick retorted, wrathfully. “If you’ll give me the word, I’ll arrange a plan, and, as soon as Vincent goes–we’ll be off.”

“I’m not your master, you young hornet; I can’t see what you’re doing all the time. All I can do is to approve or reject such doings of yours as you bring me to decide on.”

Dick’s eyes sparkled. “All right, I’ll keep you posted, never fear.”

They were a very jovial group that prattled about the long Rosedale dining-table daily now, since every one was able to come down. The house was furnished in the easy unpretentiousness that prevailed in the South in other days. Cool matting covered all the floors, the hallways, and bedchambers. The dining-room opened into a drawing-room, where Kate and Olympia took turns at the big piano. The day was divided, English fashion, into breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and supper, the latter as late as nine o’clock in the night. Jack being unprovided with regimentals, Vincent wore civilian garb, to spare the “prisoner” (as Jack jocosely called himself) mortification. Gray was the “only wear” obtainable in Richmond, Mrs. Atterbury enjoying with gentle malice the rueful perplexities of her prisoner guests, Jack, Wesley, and Richard, as they surrounded the board in this rebel attire.

“I shall feel as uncertain of myself when I get back to blue, as I do in chess, after I have played a long while with the black, changing to white. I manoeuvre for some time for the discarded color,” Jack said, one evening.

“Oh, you’ll hardly forget in this case,” Rosa said, saucily; “it is for the blacks you are manoeuvring constantly.”

Jack looked up, startled, and glanced swiftly at Dick. Had that headstrong young marplot been detected in treason with the colored people? No. Dick met his glance clear-eyed, unconstrained. The shot must have been a random one.

“I think you do us injustice, Miss Rosa,” Wesley said. “I, for one, am not interested in the blacks. All I want is the Union; after that I don’t care a rush!”

“I protest against politics,” Mrs. Atterbury intervened, gently. “When I was a girl the young people found much more interesting subjects than politics.”

Rosa: “Crops, mamma?”

Vincent: “A mistress’s eyebrow?”

Dick: “Some other fellow’s sister?”

Olympia: “Some other girl’s brother?”

Mrs. Sprague: “Giddy girls?”

Merry: “Bad boys?”

“Well, something about all of these,” Mrs. Atterbury resumed, laughing. “I don’t think young people in these times are as attached to each other as we used to be in our day–do you, Mrs. Sprague?”

“I don’t know how it is with you in the South; but we no longer have young people in the North. Our children bring us up now–we do not bring them up.”

“That accounts for the higher average of intelligence among parents noted in the last census,” Olympia interrupts her mother to say.

“There, do you see?” Mrs. Sprague continues, with a smile, and in a tone that has none of the asperity the words might imply. “No reverence, no waiting for the elders, as we were taught.”

“It depends a good deal, does it not, whether the elders are lovers?” Vincent asked, innocently.

“Oh, don’t look at me, Mrs. Sprague, for support or sympathy. Vincent is your handiwork; he was formed in the North. He is one of your new school of youth; he is Southern only in loyalty to his State. For a time I had painful apprehensions that that, too, had been educated away.”

“It was his reason that kept him faithful there,” Rosa ventured, and catches Vincent dropping his eyes in confusion from the demure glances of Olympia.

“Oh, no; pride. A Virginian is like a Roman, he is prouder to be a citizen in the Dominion than a king in another country,” Mrs. Atterbury says, with stately decision. “No matter where his heart may be,” and she glanced casually at Olympia, “his duty is to his State.”

“Politics, mamma, politics; remember your young days. Talk of kings, courts, romance, madrigals–but leave out politics,” Rosa cried, remonstratingly.

“Let’s turn to political economy. How do you propose disposing of your tobacco and cotton this year?” Jack asked, gravely.

“We are under contract to deliver ten thousand bales at Wilmington to our agent,” Vincent replied. “As for tobacco, we expect to sell all we can raise to the Yankee generals. We have already begun negotiations with some of your commanders who are too good Yankees to miss the main chance.”

“You’re not in earnest?” Jack cried, aghast.

“As earnest as a maid with her first love.”

“But who–who–is the miscreant that degrades his cause by such traffic?”

“Oh, if you wait until you learn from me, you’ll never be a dangerous accuser. I learn in letters from friends in the West that all the cotton crop has been contracted for by men either in the Northern army or high in the confidence of the Administration. You see, Jack, we are not the Arcadian simpletons you think us. This war is to be paid for out of Northern pockets, any way you look at it. We’ve got cotton and tobacco, you must have both; you’ve got money, we must have that. What we don’t sell to you we’ll send to England.”

All at the table had listened absorbedly to this strange revelation, and Jack rose from the table shocked and discouraged.

Olympia seated herself at the piano, and, slipping out, as he supposed, unseen, Jack strolled off into the fragrant alleys of oleander and laurel. Dick, however, was at his heels. The two continued on in silence, Dick trolling along, switching the bugs from the pink blossoms that filled the air with an enervating odor.

“I say. Jack, I’ve found out something.”

“What have you found out, you young conspirator?”

“Wesley Boone’s trying to get the negroes to help him off.”

“The devil he is!”

“Yes. Last night I was down in the rose-fields. Young Clem, Aunt Penelope’s boy, was sitting under a bush talking with a crony. I heard him say, ‘De cap’n’ll take you, too, ef you doan say noffin’. He guv Pompey ten gold dollars.’

“‘De Lor’! Will he take ev’ybody ‘long, too, Clem?’

“‘Good Lor’, no! He’s goin’ to get his army, and den he’ll come an’ fetch all de niggahs.’

“‘De Lor’!’

“Trying to get closer, I made a rustling of the bushes, and the young imps shot through them like weasles before I could lay hands on them. Now, what do you think of that?”

“If it is only to escape, all right; but if it is an attempt to stir up insurrection, I will stop Wesley myself, rather than let him carry it out!”

“Wouldn’t it be the best thing to warn Vincent? It would be a dreadful thing to let him go and leave his poor mother and sister here unprotected.”

“Let me think it over. I will hit on some plan to keep Wesley from making an ingrate of himself without bringing danger on our benefactors.”

Kate was dawdling on the lawn as the two returned to the house. Jack