The Iron Game by Henry Francis Keenan (page 5)

agreeable. Then, too, there’s no telling the miracles of conversion that may be brought about by such ministers as Miss Rosa there.”

Rosa blushed, Jack felt foolish, and everybody laughed except Dick, who looked unutterable things at his adored, and boldly entered the lists against the great personage by asking, in a quivering treble:

“Doesn’t the Bible say that the wife shall cleave to the husband; that his people shall be her people, his God her God, where he goes she goes?”

“It is so said in the Bible, sir; but it was a woman that uttered it, and she was in love. When you know more of the sex, you will understand that women in love are like poets; they say much that they don’t mean, and more that they don’t understand.”

“But, Mr. President, what the one woman said in the Bible all women practice. You never knew a woman that didn’t believe her husband’s beliefs, hate his hates, love his loves.”

Davis smiled, and his eyes twinkled kindly on his boyish inquisitor.

“I know only one woman. That is as much as a man can speak for. She doesn’t hate my hates, love my loves, or enter unprotestingly into all my ways. Indeed, I may say that, being a peaceful man, I wanted to remain in Washington, for I believed that Seward was sincere in pleading for a compromise; but the woman I speak of had her own opinion convinced me that she was right, and I came to my own people.”

At this moment there was a diversion. A soldier, booted and spurred, entered the room, walked to the head of the table, and bending deferentially to the President, said;

“I am ordered to deliver this message wherever you may be found.” He handed Davis a large envelope and retreated respectfully two or three paces backward. Everybody affected to resume conversation as the President, breaking the seal, said;

“Pardon me a moment, madam.” But he had no sooner ran over the lines than he turned to the courier, crying, in visible discomfiture:

“When did you leave the war office?”

“At five o’clock, sir.”

“General, we must return instantly to Richmond; a hundred or more of the prisoners have broken out of Libby! It is reported that a column of the enemy with gunboats have passed up the James.–Madam, this is one of the exigencies of a time of war. I needn’t say to an Atterbury that everything must give way to public business!” He called Lee aside, spoke rapidly to him, and the latter, beckoning Vincent, left the room. He returned in ten minutes, announcing that everything was in readiness to set out. The carriage with Mrs. Sprague’s and Merry’s small luggage was ready when the cavalcade set out, Davis riding with them and the cavalry company from below, divided into squadrons before and behind the carriage. It was eleven o’clock as the last dark line of the troop disappeared. Olympia and Jack stood at the great gate in mournful silence. The swiftness of the parting had lessened the pain, but their minds were full of the sorrow that follows the inevitable. Mrs. Sprague had herself declined to postpone the ordeal when Mrs. Atterbury pointed out the untimely hour. No, it was better to suffer this slight inconvenience to have Vincent’s protecting presence all the way to the Union lines; and Jack, acknowledging this, didn’t say a word to dissuade her. Vincent’s last act was to call Jack to his room.

“I wanted to tell you, Jack, what a great joy it has been to me–it has been to all of us–to have you in our home at this trying time. I can not tell you how much comfort it has been to me now, but some time you shall know,” Vincent stammered, and began to open a drawer in the bureau. “Here is something I want you to accept as a keepsake from me.” He drew forth a pistol-case and opened it. “It will be a melancholy pleasure for me to feel, in the dark days to come, that these weapons may prove your friend in battle, where I must be your enemy.”

“By George, they’re beauties!” Jack cried, taking the weapons out.

“Yes; they were bought last year, and I have had J.S. cut on one, and V.A. on the other. I meant them for your Christmas last year, but they were mislaid.”

“What a kind fellow you are, Vint! I don’t think I ought to take these.”

“Why not? I have others! I shall feel easier, knowing that you have them. You can stow them about you easily, they are so small.”

“But it’s against the laws of war for a prisoner to be armed.”

“That’s just the reason I haven’t asked you to take them before. You can leave them here in my room until you are exchanged, and then you can carry them with impunity.”

The household assembled at the gate leading into the roadway as the cavalcade took up the march. There were sad, sobbing farewells spoken–the kindly night covering the tears, and the loud neighing of the horses drowning the sobs.

The Northern group remained in the roadway, straining their eyes to catch the last glimpse of the wanderers as they disappeared in the misty foliage, far up the roadway.

The horizon to the zenith was full of shimmering star-points, Olympia, with Jack, turned slowly toward the house, silent and not wholly sad. Dick, in a low treble, could be heard just behind them, quoting melancholy verses to Rosa; and the brother and sister returned slowly up the dewy, odorous path. At the porch Rosa exclaimed, in surprise:

“I wonder where Pizarro is? I haven’t seen him while we have been out. It can’t be possible he has followed Vincent! What shall we do if he has?”

“Make Dick take his place. A terrier is sometimes as faithful as a mastiff,” Jack said, quickly.

“Oh! Miss Atterbury wants something with a bite, rather than a bark, and a terrier wouldn’t do,” the boy answered.

“I want Pizarro. I shall never sleep a wink all night if he isn’t here,” Rosa said, in consternation; “he is better than a regiment of soldiers, for he won’t let a human being come near the house after the doors are closed, not even the servants.”

An expedition, calling upon Pizarro in many keys, set out and wandered through the grounds, back to the quarters, to the gates leading to the rose-fields, to the stable, but Pizarro was not to be found. Lights were burning in the hall only when the four re-entered, and with a very grave face Rosa bade the rest good-night.

CHAPTER XX.

A CATASTROPHE.

Rosedale had been a bed of thorns to Wesley Boone since his recovery. He felt that he was an incongruous visitor among the rest, as a hawk might feel in a dove-cote. He would have willingly returned to Richmond–even at the risk of re-entering the prison–if Kate had not been on his hands. The life of the place, the constant necessity of masking his aversion to the Spragues, his detestation of Dick, the simple merry-making and intimate amenities of such close quarters, tasked his small art of dissimulation beyond even the most practiced powers. The garment of duplicity was gossamer, he felt, after all, in such atmosphere of loyalty and trust as surrounded him at Rosedale.

He knew that in the daily attrition and conventional intimacies of the table, the drawing-room, or the promenade, the cloak covering his resentful antipathy, his moral perversities, his thinly veiled impatience, was worn to such thin shreds that eyes keen as Jack’s must see and know him as he was. What was hatefulest and most unendurable of all was the bondage of truce in which the Atterburys held him. Wesley was no coward, and he ached to meet Jack face to face, arm to arm, and settle with that thoughtless insubordinate a rankling list of griefs heaped up in moments of over-vivacious frankness. He would make Jack smart for his arrogance, his insolence, his cursed condescension so soon as they were back among the Caribees.

But meanwhile, here, daily tortured by harmless things–tortured by his soul’s imaginings–Wesley was becoming a burden to Kate, who saw too plainly that he was in misery, and realized that it was largely through his own inherent weakness and insincerity. He had all the coarse fiber of his father without the same force in its texture. With merely superficial good manners, he was never certain whether the punctilious niceties observed toward him by the Spragues and Atterburys were not a species of studied satire. Vincent, who had never shown him the slightest consideration in Acredale, treated him here with the chivalrous decorum that the code of the South demanded in those days to a guest. Wesley ground his teeth under the burden, not quite sure whether it was mockery or malevolence. He watched with malignant attentiveness the imperceptible change of tone and manner that marked the family’s treatment of the Spragues. There was none of the grave ceremoniousness he resented in the Atterburys’ behavior with them.

Jack was a hobbledehoy son of the house, almost as much as Vincent. Kate, too, was, he felt certain, treated with a reserve not shown to Mrs. Sprague or Merry. Brooding on this, brooding on the unhappiness of his own disposition, which denied him the privilege of enjoying the best at the moment, indifferent to what might be behind, Wesley had come to hate the Atterburys for the burden of an obligation that he could never lift. He hated Mrs. Atterbury for her high-bred, easy ignoring of all conditions save those that she exacted. He hated Rosa for her gayety, her absorption in the young scamp Dick. He hated Vincent because he seemed to think there was no one in the North but the Spragues worthy of a moment’s consideration. It is in hate as in love–what we seek we find. Every innocent word and sign that passed in the group, in which he did not seek to make himself one, Wesley construed as a gird at him or his family. Constantly on the watch for slights or disparagements, the most thoughtless acts of the two groups were taken by the tormented egotist as in some sense a disparagement to his own good repute or his family standing.

Nor were the marked affection and confidence shown Kate by everybody in the house a mitigation of this malign fabric of humiliation. Jack’s fondness for Kate had not escaped the observant eyes of Dick, who had confided the secret to Rosa, who had likewise unraveled it to mamma, and, as she kept nothing from Vincent, the Atterburys had that sort of interest in Kate that intimate spectators always show in love affairs, where there are no clashing interests involved. It was a moot question, however, between the three, when, after weeks of observation, Mrs. Atterbury declared that Jack was not in love with Miss Boone. “He can’t be,” she declared. “He doesn’t seek her alone; he doesn’t make up to her in the evening. Half the time when they come together it is by Dick’s arrangement. _He_ seems to be in love with Kate.”

“How absurd!” Rosa cried, with a laugh; “a boy like him! Why, he would be in school, if there were no war.”

“Well, Rosa, I fancy that Dick hasn’t found war very much different from school, so far. He seems to recite a good deal to the mistress, and occupies the dunce’s block quite regularly,” Vincent retorted, with a provoking significance that set mamma in a brown study and suspended the comments on Kate’s and Jack’s probable sentiments.

Mrs. Sprague and Wesley were the only people in the house who had no suspicion of a deeper feeling than mere passing goodfellowship between Jack and Kate. Both were blinded by the same confidence. The mother could never conceive a son of the house of Sprague making such a breach on the family traditions as a union with a Boone. Wesley could not conceive a sister of his giving her heart to the son of a family that had insolently refused to concede social equality to her father. Something of Wesley’s miserable inner unrest could not fail to be visible to the Atterburys, but the less congenial he became the more watchfully considerate they made their treatment of him. He was their guest, with all the sacred rights and immunities that quality implies, in the exaggerated code of the Southern host. Kate was the single power that Wesley had bent his headstrong will before, ever since he was a boy. His father he obeyed, while in his presence, trusting to wheedling to make his peace in the event of disobedience. But Kate he couldn’t wheedle.

She was relentless in her scorn for his meannesses and follies, and, though he did not always heed her counsels, he proved their justness by finding his own course wrong. Kate, however, hesitated about remonstrating with him on his deepening moodiness, for she was not quite sure whether it was mad jealousy of Dick’s favor in Rosa’s eyes, or a secret purpose to attempt to fly from the gentle bondage of Rosedale. Wesley with Rosa it was remarked by Kate, was, or seemed to be, his better self, or rather better than the self with which others identified him. It was, however, she feared, more to torment Dick, than because she found Wesley to her liking, that the little maid often carried the moody captain off into the garden, pretending to teach him the varied flora of that blooming domain. Dick remarked these excursions with growing impatience, and visited his anger upon Rosa in protests so pungent and woe-begone that she was forced to own to him that she only pretended an interest in the captain, so that he might not think he was shut out of the confidence of the circle.

“And who cares if he does think he is shut out, I should like to know? He is a sneak, and I don’t like to have you talking with him alone,” Dick cries, quite in the tone of the Benedict who has passed the marriage-portal and feels safe to make his will known.

“I should like to know what right you have to order what I shall or shall not do?” Rosa protests, half angry, half laughing. “Why, you talk like a grown man–like a husband. How dare you?”

Dick pauses confused, and looks guiltily about at this.

“Ah, if you put it that way I have no right except this: My whole heart is yours. You know that. You may not have given me all yours.” (Protesting shrug from Rosa’s shoulders.) “Well, all the same; if my heart is all your own you have a duty in the case. You ought to spare your own property from pain.” (Rosa laughs softly.) “Of course you are right. You are always right. How could such a beautiful being be wrong!” The artful rogue slips his arm about her waist at this, and, after a feeble struggle, he is permitted to hold this outwork unprotested.

“And, Rosa, if I speak like a man, it is because I am a man. Wasn’t it the part of maids in the old times to inspire the arm of their sweethearts; to make them constant in danger, brave in battle, and patient in defeat? Are you less than any of the damsels we read of in chivalry? Am I not a man when I look in your dear eyes and see nothing worldlier than love, nothing earthlier than truth there?”

“What a blarney you are! I must really get Vint to send you away, or he will have a Yankee brother-in-law.”

“And the Perleys will have a rebel at the head of the house.”

Now, this silly prattle had been carried on in the arbor near the library, and Wesley, sitting under the curtain, had heard every word of it. Neither the words nor the unmistakable sounds that lips meeting lips make, which followed, served to soothe his angry discontent. This was early on the great Davis gala day, and thereafter he disappeared from the scene. He made one of the party to Williamsburg, and, though distraught in the conversation, was keenly alert to all he saw.

Rallied upon his reticence, he had snubbed Kate and turned disdainfully from Jack’s polite proffers to guide him through the review. He had studied Davis all through the manoeuvres with a furtive, fascinated attention, which Mrs. Atterbury remarked with complacency, attributing it to awe. At the dinner-table, seated between Kate and Merry, he had never taken his eye from the chief of the Confederacy. Twice the President, courteously addressing him, he had blushed guiltily and dropped his gaze. Before the dinner was half over he pleaded a severe headache, and, bidding his hostess good-night, hurried from the room. The wide hall was deserted; the moon threw broad swaths of light on the cool matting, and he halted for an instant, breathing rapidly. Something lying on the rug at the door moved languidly. Wesley, looking carefully about, moved swiftly to the spot and stopped. Pizarro raised his head, whining amicably, and, as Wesley bent over to pat him, wagged his tail with a spasmodic thud against the floor, in sign of goodfellowship.

“Come, Pizarro, come with me,” Wesley said, coaxingly. But the dog, redoubling the tattoo with his tail, remained obstinately at his post. Wesley stole to the end of the hall and listened, then, hearing the busy clamor of the servants moving from the kitchen to the dining-room, he retraced his steps to the stairs, bounded lightly up and in three minutes reappeared, and, keeping his eyes on the half-closed doors, slipped softly to Pizarro. The dog sniffed excitedly, and as Wesley took a thick parcel from his coat-pocket the beast leaped up and attempted to seize it.

“Follow me, Pizarro, and you shall have it.” He held up the packet, a red, glistening slice of raw beef. The dog whined ecstatically and Wesley, holding a morsel of it just out of his reach, retreated up the stairs. Pizarro bounded after him as if construing the by-play into a challenge, and frisking in all sorts of fantastic shapes to win the savory prize. The door of Wesley’s room was open, and as the dog came abreast of it he flung a piece into the apartment. Pizarro, lowering his sniffing nose, looked at the tempting bit sidewise, and then wagging his tail in modest deprecation of his boldness, made a start inward. It was swallowed in an instant, and then, as Wesley entered, the door was closed. Pizarro, by the humility of his manner, the lowered head and sidelong glance, asked pardon for intruding upon the privacy of a guest, but argued with his ears and by short yelps, in extenuation, that such a feast as a bit of meat–after an active day, when the servants had forgotten to feed him–no dog with a healthy appetite could resist, no matter how perfect his breeding. He was ready for the larger ration Wesley held in his hand.

Wesley held the temptation in his hand until he had lured the dog into a large closet communicating with the bedroom by a locked door. Once in, the door was shut, and the young man sank on a seat in a thrill of grateful relief.

“That danger’s over,” he muttered. “Now to see who is in the upper rooms.”

Perfect silence on the upper floor; only the solemn shadows of the night, as the moon rises higher and higher, and the plaintive cries of the night-birds alone betoken life. Through the windows the white-jacketed house-servants are rushing gayly to and from the dining-room. All the rooms are dimly lighted. The President’s apartment is fragrant with blossoms, and the lace counterpane turned down. Retracing his steps, Wesley enters Vincent’s room on the corridor with his own. The candle is burning dimly on the mantel. He seems to know his whereabouts very well for he makes straight for a bureau between the bed and the window. He takes from the top drawer a pistol-case, which he has evidently handled before, as he touches the spring at once. He takes out one pistol, and, rapidly extracting the loads, puts it back. He has taken four out of the five barrels of the second when a sound of footsteps in the hall startles him. He has barely time to replace the weapons, close the case, put it in the drawer and crawl under the bed, when Vincent and Jack enter.

His suspense and terror are so overmastering that he can only hear an occasional word. His own heart-beats sound in his ears like the thumping of a paddle. Is Vincent going to bed? Are Jack and he going to sit and smoke, as they often do? No, relief beyond words, they are going out! Perhaps to Jack’s room? They often sit there until very late, and then Vincent slips in stocking-feet to his own room. But they are gone, and he must fly. He dares not return to extract the last charge. But one ball can’t do much hurt in the dark, and, if his plans are carried out with care, there will be no chance for any one to use the weapons on the rescuing party, even if he were disposed to. In a moment Wesley is back in his room, marking, with surprise, that there is no sound from Jack’s or Dick’s room. But all is well. He is in his own room and secure from surprise.

He sat down to think. He must keep everything in mind. One whippoorwill cry from outside would mean that all was well; two that he must hurry to the rendezvous. It seemed like a dream. Davis, the arch-rebel, the chief architect of the Confederacy, under the same roof; in an hour, if no hitch come, the traitor would be bound and flying in trusty Union hands. And when they got North?–when he, Wesley Boone, handed over to the authorities in Washington this hateful chief of a hateful cause, what fame would be his! No one could dispute it. He had informed Butler’s agent; he had watched day and night; had given the Unionists plans of the grounds; was now periling his own rescue to bring the arch-traitor to his doom. Ah! what in all history would compare with this glorious daring? He sat glowing in dreams of such delicious, roseate delight, that he took no heed of time, and was startled when he heard Dick and Jack bidding each other good-night. Then in a few minutes be heard Jack’s door open and a tap at Dick’s door.

“Come to my room. I want to show you a present I got to-night.” Then silence. Wesley had no watch. The rebels had relieved him of that at Bull Run. But it must be quite midnight. He opened one of the windows softly. Oh, the glory of the night, harbinger of his high emprise, his deathless glory! The wondrous, wondrous stillness of the scene–and to think that over yonder, in the dark depths of the forest, fifty, perhaps a hundred, men were waiting for him–for him? Yes, the mighty arms of the Union were about him; the trump of a fame, such as no song had ever sung, was poised to blow to the world his daring. Hark! Heavens, yes; the long, tender plaint of the whippoorwill. Ah! now, now there was no doubt. In swooning delight he waits. Good Heaven! What’s that sound? Angels and ministers of grace, the dead in wailing woe over the deed about to be done? Ah! he breathes.

Pizarro has grown tired of imprisonment and has set up an expostulatory wail, facetiously impatient at first, but now breaking into sharp yelps. This will never do. He must stop that ear-splitting outcry, or the househould will be awakened. That sharp-eyed, razor tongued young devil, Dick, is just across the hall. Wesley opens the closet door, and Pizarro bounds out, licking his jailer’s hands in grateful acknowledgment. He frisks, appealing to the room door, inviting the further favor of being permitted to go to his post, his wagging tail explaining how necessary it is that a dog intrusted with such important duties as the guardianship of the household can not suffer the casual claims of friendlessness or the comity of surreptitious feeding to lure him into infidelity. The tail proving ineffectual in argument, Pizarro supplemented its eloquence by sharp admonitory yelps, tempered by a sharp _crescendo_ whining, of which he seemed rather proud as an accomplishment.

“Damn the brute! He will ruin everything. I must kill him.” But how? He had no weapon. He looked about the room in gasping terror–the dog accepting the move as a sign that the eloquence of the tail argument had proved overpowering, supplemented this by an explosion of ecstatic yelps of a deep, bass volume, that murdered the deep silence of the night, like salvos of pistols. The curtains to the windows were held in place by stout dimity bands. Whispering soothingly to the dog, Wesley knotted four of these together, and, making as if to open the door, slipped the bands like a lasso over the head of the unsuspecting brute. In an instant his howls were silenced. The dog, with protruding tongue and eyes–that had the piteous pleading and reproach of the human, looked up at him, bloodshot and failing. But now the second signal must be near! He may have missed it in the infernal howling of the brute. Yes, that was it. He looks out of the window; his room is in view of the covered way to the kitchen. He sees moving figures; he hears voices. They are there. He has missed the signal; he must hasten to them. He puts out the lights and opens the door cautiously. All is invitingly, reassuringly still. He is at the hall door in a minute, in another he is with the shadows in the rear of the house.

“Jones, is it you?”

“Ah, captain, we are waiting for ropes to secure the prize.”

“There is no time to wait. The dog has made such a noise that I didn’t hear your signal. I saw you from my window. Come, we must not lose a minute, for I couldn’t fasten the brute very well. Davis is here, and we have only to take him from his room. The cavalry went about eleven; I heard them march away an hour ago.”

“Now, give me the exact situation here, that there may be no surprise. How many men are we likely to encounter in the event of a fracas?”

“Counting Davis and Lee, four in the house. How near the orderlies and guards are you know better than I. Besides Davis, there’s Jack Sprague, young Atterbury, and Dick–but he don’t count.”

“No! Why?”

“He is not over his wound, and besides he’s but a boy. They had two pistols loaded, but I managed to draw all the charges except one. So that if Jack and Atterbury should come to the rescue they could do no damage.”

“They sleep at this end of the house?”

“Yes, and our work is at the other.”

“Well, then, in that case I will get ladders I saw near the carriage-house and put them up to Davis’s window as a means of escape in case these young men get after us before we finish the job. Even with their unloaded pistols, two full grown men and the boy could make trouble.”

He called Number Two and gave him orders to place a ladder at each of the two windows of Davis’s room, and to have a man at the top of each–armed. When the men had hurried away, Jones continued:

“Here’s a pistol for you. It is a six-shooter bull-dog, and will do sure work. Now move on to the stairway; others will join us in a moment. You’re sure you know Davis’s room? It would be mighty awkward to poke into any of the others.”

“Yes; everybody in the house was taken to see it. It is the old lady’s room, occupied by mother and daughter, generally; but given up to the President for the night.”

They are in the hall, stealing softly over the thick matting; they are in the broad corridor–running the whole length of the house–Jack’s, Olympiads, Dick’s, and Kate’s rooms all behind them–southward. Wesley, with Jones touching his right arm and Number Two at his left, is moving slowly, silently northward to the left of the stairs.

“Great God! What was that?”

A sound as of a clattering troop of cavalry, the neighing of horses in the grounds! Wesley halted, trembling, dismayed.

“That’s all right,” Jones whispered, “I ordered the stables opened so that the horses wouldn’t be handy, if any one should happen to be at hand who felt like pursuing us, or going for the cavalry.”

“It was a mistake; the horses will arouse the house. We must hurry.”

In a moment they were before the door of the Davis room. Wesley raised the latch. It was an old-fashioned fastening. Number Two was directed to stand at the threshold while Wesley and Jones secured Davis.

Now they are in the room. There is no sound; but from the open window, looking upon the carriage-road, there is the tramping of horses, drowning all sounds in the room. They are nearly to the large canopied bed between the open windows, when Jones, who is nearest, discovers a startled apparition half rising from the bed. He is discovered by the figure at the same instant, and a piercing scream, so loud, prolonged, and ear-splitting that it echoes over the house, ends the wild dream of the marauders. Wesley reels in panic. But Jones is an old campaigner. If he can’t have victory, there must be no recapture. He rushes at the white figure, and snatches–Rosa, limp, nerveless, and swooning!

“See who’s in the bed!–I’m damned if you haven’t brought us to the wrong room–see, quick!”

But there was no necessity for seeing. Mrs. Atterbury uttered a stifled cry: “Help! help! murder!”

“You, Boone, know the place; stand by me and I’ll see that we are not nabbed; but you’ve made a nice mess of the affair.”

But the comments of the indignant Jones were suddenly drowned in a blood-curdling sound in the doorway: the savage, suppressed growl of a dog, and the responsive imprecations of Number Two. With this came the apparition of two figures, at sight of which Jones darted to the window, the two figures, Jack and Dick, following to his right and left.

“Save your powder, whoever you are. Fire at me, and you hit the young woman. I don’t know who she is, but her body is my protection.” Saying this, Jones coolly, determinedly retreated backward to the window; but Dick, hardly hearing, and certainly not comprehending, had come within arm’s length of the two, somewhat to the left of Jones.

“Don’t fear, Rosa,” Dick exclaimed, between his teeth. “I can see you. Ah, ah!” Then four reports, that sounded as one, split the air.

Rosa broke from the thick cloud of smoke as a fifth report rang out, and a scream of death went up between the bed and the door where Jack stood.

At the instant Dick spoke, Jack, in the doorway, heard an exclamation at his side. He half turned, and as he did so his eye caught the outlines of a man, with a shining something raised in the air, coming toward him from the bedside. He pointed his own pistol at the figure, there were three simultaneous reports, and the oncoming figure fell with a hoarse cry of pain. The man at Jack’s back now cried:

“Get through the window; they’re coming through the house!”

“It’s only a dog; come on.”

Then there was a sound of flying feet in the wide passage.

“Are you hurt, Rosa? Tell me–did they hit you? Speak, oh, speak!” It was Dick’s voice, in a convulsive sob. Now, the boy again, that danger was gone.

Jack meanwhile had struck a match, and soon found the candles on the night-table near the bed. There was, at the same instant, the audible sound of scurrying along the passage. He ran out. The man assailed by the dog had reached the head of the stairs. As Jack got half-way down the corridor, man and dog disappeared over the balustrade. When he reached the hall the dog was inside, growling furiously, the door was closed and the man gone. Jack opened the door. Pizarro bounded out, and Jack followed. The dog stopped a moment, sniffed the ground, and made for the kitchen. A loud bark, followed by a ferocious growl, and a scream of mortal pain broke on the air; then a pistol-shot, and a long, pitiful gasp, and silence.

“Well, that dog won’t trouble any one now,” Jack heard, and the voice made his hair rise into bristling quills.

“Barney!” he cried; “Barney Moore, is that you?”

“It is; no one else. If I’m not drunk or dreaming, that’s my own Jack. God be praised!”

“How in Heaven’s name did you get here?”

“I might ask you the same question, but you have priority of query, as they say in court. I came here first to help rescue Captain Wesley Boone, and second to capture his rebel Excellency Jeff Davis.”

“O my God! my God! Barney, Barney, tell me all, and tell me quickly!”

Barney told all he knew, and told it rapidly, Jack catching his arm almost fiercely, as the miserable truth began to define itself in his whirling senses. Then the meaning of the two marauders in the ladies’ apartments became plain. Jack and Barney were hurrying toward the chamber as the latter talked, Jack filled with an awful fear.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE STORY OF THE NIGHT.

Now, the timely–or untimely–appearance of Jack and Dick in the crisis of the plot came about in this way: Dick, on returning from Jack’s room, had remarked, with quickening suspicion, a gleam of light under Wesley’s door. Perhaps he is ill, the boy thought, compunctiously; if he were, he (Dick) ought to offer his services. He started to carry this kind thought into effect, when he heard suspicious sounds in the room. Some one was moving. He waited, now in alert anticipation. The plaintive signal of the whippoorwill–bringing passionate energy to Wesley–reached Dick’s ears; he heard the opening of the window; then silence. Could Wesley be descending thence to the ground? He blew out his candle, drew the curtain, and cautiously raised the window. No; Wesley was not getting out. Then the sound of the Pizarro episode came dimly through the walls. He thought the dog’s expostulatory growls a voice. There was someone in the room with Wesley. Perhaps it was Kate. It wouldn’t do to act until he was sure that his suspicions were a certainty. Besides, Jack had warned him not to interfere, with a mere escape on Wesley’s part, unless it seemed to involve depredations upon the Atterburys. Then he heard the faint sound of the scuffle, when Wesley throttled the compromising mastiff. Should he slip over and warn Jack? He was moving toward the door, when, through the stillness of the night, a sound came up from the direction of the quarters. He ran lightly to the window again. His eyes, now accustomed to the darkness in his room, distinguished clearly in the pale starlight. He thrilled with a sudden sensation of choking. Yonder, stealing houseward from the rose-gardens, he could plainly discern two–four–six–moving figures. Heavens, the slaves were out! There was to be a servile uprising. Now he must go and warn Jack; but he must note first whither the assassins were directing their attack. Perhaps, with the aid of Jack’s pistols, they could be frightened away by a few shots from the windows. He ran noiselessly to Jack’s room, to his bed, and whispered in his sleeping ear:

“Jack, make no noise; dress yourself and come. The negroes are surrounding the house, and Wesley is in mischief.”

Jack was awake and in his clothes in a few seconds. He handed Dick one of the pistols, and, armed with the other, hastened toward Wesley’s room. The door was open and all was silent. Dick looked in hastily, marked the open window, and exclaimed:

“He is gone! Come to my room. I know exactly where to locate them from my window; it is nearer the point they halted at than Wesley’s.”

Yes; figures were moving swiftly against the trellised walls that led to the kitchen. They moved, too, with the precision of people thoroughly acquainted with the place. Then some one appeared swiftly from under the shadow of the house; then three came toward it and passed under the veranda near Wesley’s window. Jack leaned far out to discover what this diversion meant. At the same instant the sounding gallopade of hoofs came from the tranquil roadway leading to the stables. The shrill whinny of horses broke on the air.

“They are mounted. There are a score of them!” Jack cried, desperately. “We can at least keep them out of the house.”

“We can, if Wesley hasn’t opened the doors to them,” Dick said, shrewdly.

“That’s a fact. But is it sure Wesley is not in his room? Bring matches and let us examine it.”

There was no sign of Wesley in the room. The cool night air poured in from the open window.

“Draw the curtain before you strike the match,” Jack whispered. “We must not let a light be seen from the outside.”

“But the curtains are thin, the light will shine through.”

“Sh! Come here. By Heaven, it is Wesley, and he is dead! No–the devil!–it is Pizarro–dead! Kneel down and strike a match, keeping between the light and the window. One glance will be enough.”

One glimpse revealed the dog with distended tongue and half-glazed eyes, but still alive. Jack loosed the band from the neck. The dog gave a convulsive thrill and uttered a plaintive moan.

“Set a basin of water down here. He may recover. Poor fellow! This was a cruel return for his kindness to Wesley,” Jack said, forcing the dog’s nose into the basin. He began to lap the cool water greedily. But now Dick, in the doorway, littered a cry.

“They are in the house. I hear them moving in the vestibule. Come, for God’s sake, Jack! They are making for Mrs. Atterbury’s apartment. Evidently some one who knows that the family jewels are there, for what else can they want?”

The dog staggered to his feet as the two stole softly from the room. They followed with high-wrought, loudly-beating hearts and tingling nerves. The marauders in front of them moved on like men accustomed to the house. They made, as the light footfalls indicated, straight for Mrs. Atterbury’s door, which, unlike the others, fronted the length of the hall in a small vestibule sunk into the lateral wall. The invaders were thus screened from Jack and Dick when they had turned the corner, and the latter were forced to move with painful caution to get the advantage of surprise to offset superior numbers. But now a new peril menaces them. A shuffling in the long corridor behind them freezes the current of their blood. They have been caught in a trap. There are two forces in the house. They both turn and halt, silent and trembling, against the south wall and wait. The steps still advance, the scraping of the nailed boots tears the light matting.

“We will wait until the new-comer or new-comers are abreast,” Jack breathes in Dick’s ear, “and then fire a volley into them point blank.”

At the instant Rosa’s shriek, blood-curdling and electric, breaks from the corner. Dick is over the intervening steps in two mighty bounds, Jack at his heels and the foe in the rear following. Against the open window Dick catches the outlines of his darling in the brawny arms of Tarquin. He has the advantage of the light, and, as the ruffian retreats to the window, Dick is at his side, and in an instant deals him a stunning blow on the head. Jack, in the dim light, sees the dark figure dashing at him with the gleam of steel in his hand. He levels his weapon, three reports ring out at once, and the miserable Wesley falls with a dreadful gurgling gasp on the floor.

But there are interlopers in the rear as well! Jack turned to confront them. He realized vaguely hearing a struggle as he confronted the robbers. Ah! yes, the dog; the dog has come upon the scene. There is sound of low, fierce, growling, flying footsteps on the floor, and Jack, assuring himself by a quick glance that there were no more marauders in the room, hurried to see that the front door was closed before re-enforcements could come to the invaders. But Pizarro’s lusty growls, denoting recovered strength, attracted him kitchenward, and he encountered Barney, and with Barney something of a clew to the hideous attempt. One prayer was in his heart–one hope–that Wesley had escaped; but with shuddering horror he hastened with Barney back to the scene of blood and death. The great candelabra on the mantel had been lighted, and the room was visible as in daylight. Jack halted, transfixed, horror-stricken, in the doorway. The women in hastily snatched robes were all there, and on the floor, wailing over the dead body of Wesley, Kate sat, prone and disheveled, calling to him to look at her, to speak to her, as she kissed the cold lips in incredulous despair. She paid no heed to Mrs. Atterbury, to Olympia, kneeling beside her–all her heart, all her senses benumbed in the agony of the cruel blow. Jack moved to the piteous group, and, dropping on his knees, felt the lifeless pulse, and sank back, pale and shrinking, with the feeling that he was a murderer. Mrs. Atterbury turned to him, crying convulsively:

“Oh, what does it mean, Mr. Sprague? what does it mean?”

“It is a dreadful game of cross-purposes. These unhappy men believed Mr. Davis to be in this room when they entered. They meant to capture him and carry him North.”

“Ah, thank God! thank God! who carried our President away in time,” and the matron clasped her hands fervently as she sank in a chair. But the sight of Kate, woe-begone, feverishly caressing the dead brother, brought the tenderer instincts back. She rose again, and, clasping her arms about the poor girl, said pleadingly:

“Let him be carried to his room; you are covered with blood.”

“Ah, it is his blood, his innocent blood! Murdered, when he should have found merry.”

Jack found tongue now. He was hideously calm–the frightful calm of great-hearted men, who use mirth, levity, and indolency to hide emotion.

“Miss Boone–Kate it was perhaps the shot from my pistol that killed Wesley. I did it in defense of women in peril, in defense of my own life. It was an accident in one sense. Had I known the circumstances I certainly shouldn’t have fired, but you must put the blame on me, not upon this guiltless household.”

She looked up at him–looked with a wild, despairing, unbelieving gaze, pressing the handsome dead face to her bosom, and then, with a wild, wailing sob, bent her head until the shining dark mass of hair fell like a funeral veil over her own and the dead face. Rosa, who had disappeared in the dressing-room, now entered the chamber. Turning from the woful group on the floor, she glanced hastily about, as if in search of some one. Her eyes fell upon Dick, dazed and bleeding, on the couch. She ran to him with a tender cry.

“O Richard! are you hurt? Great heavens! your face is all blood. You are wounded. O mamma, come–come–Richard is dying!”

The boy tried his best to smile, holding his hand over his left side, as if stifling pain. He smiled–a bright, contented happy smile–as Rosa knelt, sobbing, by his side, and, opening his jacket, baring the blood-stained shirt, plucked a purplish rose from the bleeding bosom.

“The white rose is red now, Rosa.”

“Oh, my darling! my darling!” Rosa sobbed; and the boy, smiling in the joy of it, tried to raise himself to fold her in his arms. But the long tension had been too much–he fell back unconscious.

Olympia saw that Mrs. Atterbury, the natural head of the house, was unequal to the dismal burden of control. She took the painful duty of order upon herself, sent Jack to summon the servants, called Barney to her aid in removing Dick to his room, and, when the terrified housemaids came, distributed the rest to the nearest apartments. Morning had dawned when the work was done, and then Jack set out to investigate the condition of the quarters. Twenty or more of the negroes had disappeared. It was easy to trace them to the swamp, but Jack made no attempt to organize a pursuit. Blood could be traced on the white shell path leading to the rose-fields, and the pond gate was wide open. He reported the state of affairs to Mrs. Atterbury. She begged him to take horse to Williamsburg, bring the surgeon, and deliver a note to the commanding officer. He returned in two hours with the surgeon, and a half-hour later a cavalry troop clattered into the grounds.

Dick’s wound was first examined. The ball had entered the fleshy part of his chest, just under the armpit. It was readily extracted, and, if so much blood had not been lost, the boy would not be in serious danger. Wesley had died almost instantly. The ball entered his breast just above the heart. He had passed away painlessly. Jones was shot through the right shoulder, the ball passing clear across the breast, grazing the upper ribs, and lodging just above the left lung. He was, by Mrs. Atterbury’s command, removed to the quarters and delivered to the commander of the cavalry troop as a spy, an inciter of servile insurrection. By order of the department commander, civilians were refused all communication with him, as the Davis cabinet meant to make a stern example so soon as he was able to bear trial. Mrs. Atterbury announced to Jack and Olympia that so soon as Dick could bear removal the house would be closed and the family return to Richmond. They heard this with relief, for the place had become hideous to all now. To Jack it was a reminder of his misfortune, and to every one of the group it was associated with crime, treason, and blood. The hardest part of poor Jack’s burden was the seizure of Barney, who was marched off by the cavalry commander. Vincent gone, Jack had no one to reach the ear of authority, and he shrank from asking the intervention of the mistress whose home had been invaded by the guiltless culprit. The case was stated with all the eloquence Jack was master of to the captain in command.

“You are a soldier, sir,” the officer replied. “You know I have no latitude in the matter. This Moore has no status as a regular prisoner of war; he is found on the premises of a non-combatant aiding servile insurrection. Even President Davis himself could not intervene. The Southern people are deeply agitated by Butler’s attempts to arouse the negroes. We have been weakened, robbed by the abduction of hundreds right here on the Peninsula. The gang that Moore came here with was led by this scoundrel Jones, who is Butler’s agent. A very vigorous example must be made of these wretches, or the country-side will be deserted and the government will be without produce. We must inspire confidence in the owners of plantations, or the soldiers in the army will have to come back to guard their homes.”

Jack saw the futility of further pleading. The officer was unquestionably right. Such scenes as Rosedale had witnessed would end in the desertion of the rural regions of the Confederacy. At Mrs. Atterbury’s urgent intercession Kate was permitted to leave the lines with her dead. She was conducted to the rebel outposts in the Atterbury carriage, and under a flag of truce entered the Union lines near Hampton. Olympia accompanied her in the carriage, Jack riding with the escort. Kate refused every suggestion to see Jack; refused his own prayerful message, and sternly, solemnly with her dead passed from the scene of her sorrows.

Youth and something else stronger than medicine, more tenacious than any other motive that keeps the life-current brisk and vigorous, made Dick’s recovery swift and sure. Rosa had no torments for him now. The blood-red rose had proved a magician’s amulet to confirm her mind in the sweet teachings of her heart. But the patrician mother was with difficulty brought to listen to the tying of this love-knot. She had looked forward to a grand alliance for the heiress of Rosedale–an alliance that should bring the family high up in the dominant hierarchy of the South. She listened silently to the young girl’s pleading prattle of the boy’s bravery, his wit, his manliness. She did not say no, but she hoped to find a way to distract her daughter from a _mesalliance_, which would not only diminish her child’s rank, but compromise the family politically. Such a sacrifice could not be. Fortunately, both were mere children, and the knot would unravel itself without perplexities that maturer love would have involved. So the mother smiled on the happy girl, kissed Dick tenderly morning and night, for he had been a hero in their defense, and she was too kindly of heart, too loyal to obligation, to permit Dick’s attitude of suitor to lessen her fondness and admiration for the bright, handsome lad. Olympia was the confidante of both the lovers, listened with her usual good-humor to the boy’s raptures and the girl’s panegyrics, and soon came to share Jack’s high place in the happy lovers’ devotion.

CHAPTER XXII.

A CARPET-KNIGHT.

Jack meanwhile sank into incurable gloom. The memory of Kate’s mute, reproachful look, her heart-broken outcry, never quitted him. He woke at times with the dead eyes of Wesley staring into the night at him, the convicting gaze of Kate fastened upon him. He must fly, or he must die in this abhorred, guilt-haunted atmosphere. Olympia saw this, Mrs. Atterbury saw it, and the first week in November Rosedale was turned over to the military and the household re-established in the stately house in the official quarter of Richmond, where the bustle and movement of new conditions gave Jack’s mind another direction, or, rather, took it from the bitter brooding that threatened madness.

When the sun accepted the wind’s challenge to contest for the traveler’s cloak, I dare say all the spectators of the novel highway robbery–the moon, the stars, the trees, birds and beasts, and others that the fable does not mention–took odds that the wind would snatch off the wayfarer’s garment in triumph. However, the wind whipped and thrashed the poor man in vain. The stronger it blew and the more it walloped the cloak’s folds, the tighter and more determinedly the traveler held on to it, as he plodded wearily over the hillside. But when the sun came caressingly, inspiring gentle confidence, bathing the body in warm moisture, the tenacious hold was relaxed, then the disputed coat was thrown over his arm, and as the vista spread far away in golden light, the victim cast the garment by the wayside and the sun came off victor. Youth is despoiled of the garment of grief in this sort. Congenial warmth, the sunshine of friendliness, soon relax the mantle of woe, and the path that looks wintry and hard becomes a way of light and gayety.

It was by mingling–at first perfunctorily–in the gayety of the Confederate capital that Jack lost the melancholy in which the tragedy at Rosedale had clothed his spirits. At worst, the calamity was over; he had been a guiltless vengeance in the punishment of Wesley’s treason. So he took bond in hope of better things to come. With a stout heart, strong limbs, a plowman’s appetite, and a natural bent to joyousness, a youth of twenty-two or three is not apt to mistake his memories for his hopes and hang the horizon in black when the sun is shining in his eyes!

Richmond, always the center of a fascinating society, was at that time exuberant in her young metropolitan glories. It was the gayest capital in the Western hemisphere. To resist its seductions would have tasked the self-denial of a more constant anchorite than our dashing Jack ever aspired to be, in the lowest stage of his martial vicissitudes. There was nothing of the garishness of the parvenu in the capital’s display. The patrician caste ruled in camp and court. The walls that had echoed to the oratory of Jefferson, Henry, Washington, Randolph, now housed the young Congress of the new Confederacy. An hundred years of political, military, legal, and social precedence were the inheritance of the men chief in the cabinet, the council, and the camp. Stirring traditions clung about every quarter of the town, now devoted to the offices of administration, from the Mayo wharves to the lodgings of Washington and Lafayette. On the stately square yonder, where the musing eye of the rebel chief might study its history, stood the suggestive mansion where Burr’s treason was brought home to that first great rebel.

Not far distant the disdainful pointed out the tenement where Fremont had instructed the Richmond youth in far other doctrines than those which made him the abolitionist choice for President in after-times. Royalist and republican glories mingled in the reliquary edifices that met the wondering eyes of the provincial Confederates drawn to the capital in the generous enthusiasm of that first prodigious achievement at Bull Run. Here a royal Governor had dwelt, yonder a Bonaparte had sojourned and beguiled the famous beauties of Powhatan, as the patriarchs loved to call the city. A Lee was the chief of the military staff, a Randolph ruled the war office; scions of the Washingtons family filled a dozen subordinate places; the kin of Patrick Henry revived their ancestor’s glory by as zealous a devotion to the new revolution. With personages like these in every office the society of the new capital revived the brilliancy of the French Directory and also the character of the States-General, while Holland held the Spains at bay. The blockade had not yet pinched the affluent, nor beggared the industries of the well-to-do. Always famous for a brilliant bar, a learned judiciary, and a cultivated taste among its women, Richmond in 1861 was the ideal of a political, military, and social rendezvous of a young nation.

The raw legions had been victorious in the first pitched battle of the war on the plains of Manassas, and what might not be reasonably hoped from them under the training of such muster-minds as Johnston, Beauregard, Jackson, and Lee? Wasn’t it the common talk among diplomats, the concurrent opinion of the French and English press, the despairing admission of the half-hearted and panic-stricken North, that one more such decisive victory would bring the South peace and independence? Wasn’t it, indeed, well known among the favored juntas that those sagacious diplomats, Senators Mason and Slidell, had delayed their journey to Europe in order to aid the President in the treaty of peace that the victorious legions of Johnston were to exact in Washington?

Jack was amazed and disheartened at what he saw and heard. The activity, resources, gayety, and confidence of the authorities and people, recalled to his mind, Oxford, the jocund capital of Charles II and the royalists, while the Commonwealth leaders were drilling their armies. But instead of the chaos of rapine, the wanton excesses, the pillage of churches and colleges that marked the tenure of the miserable Charles, Richmond was as orderly, serene, the Congress as deliberate, and the people as content, as the Rome of the conquest of Persia or France after Jemmapes. The army was hot for battle, and as confident of the result as the Guard at Austerlitz or McClellan at Malvern. The work done and the way of its doing showed that the populace, as well as the rulers, were convinced of the destiny of the city to be henceforth mistress of herself, the preordained metropolis of half the continent–perhaps the whole continent–for, would the North be able to resist joining States with a destiny so glorious–a regal republic where birth and rank were tacitly enthroned? The city’s greatness was taken by the mass, as a matter of course–like an heir in chancery who has won all but the final decree in the suit, or like a great nobleman who has come to his inheritance.

Though it was the first week of November when the Atterburys found home affairs going on smoothly in the town-house, summer still disputed with winter the short lovely days of fall, as Jack described the lingering May-day mildness of this seductive Southern autumn. It was the first season he had ever spent south of New York, and, like most Americans, he realized, with wonder, that the wind which brought ice and snow to New York, visited lower Virginia with only a sharp evening and morning reminder that summer was gone. The balm and beauty of the climate came with something of healing to the hurt his heart and hope had suffered at Rosedale. If anything could have mitigated the pangs of a young warrior perplexed in love and held in leash in war, it was such an existence as the Atterburys inveigled him into leading. The part of carpet-knight is not difficult to learn, and the awkwardness of it is to some extent atoned for when the service is constrained. At least Jack took this philosophical view of it, and soon gave himself up to the merry social life of his surroundings with an animation that led his hosts to hope that he might be won over to the Confederate cause. Very young men do not sorrow long or deeply, and Jack was young. He was neither reckless nor trifling, but I am sure that none of the adulating groups that made much of the handsome Yankee in Richmond that season would have suspected that the young man looked in his mirror night and morning, frowned darkly at the reflected image he saw there, and said, solemnly, “You are a murderer!” It was by no means a tragic accent in which this thrilling apostrophe was spoken. It was very much in the tone that a woman employs when she looks hastily in the mirror and utters a soft “What a fright I am!” apparently receiving comforting contradiction enough from the mirror to make the remark worth frequent repetition.

As a matter of fact, however, Jack was not insensible to the awkward complication of his predicament. Grief as a mantle is difficult to adjust to the shoulders of the young. It is melted by the ardor of companionship as swiftly as it is spun by the loom of adversity. His interest in the strange scenes that the war brought to pass, his association with people–intimate in a sense with the leading forces of rebellion, the airs of incipient grandeur, these raw instruments of government gave themselves–all these things engrossed the observant faculties of the young man, who looked out upon the serio-comic harlequinade playing about him as a hostage of the Roundheads might have taken part in the showy festivities of the Cavaliers, in the years when the chances of battle had not gone over wholly to the Puritans. Not that the figure illustrates the contrasting conditions adequately. For, if the South prided itself at all–and the South did pride itself vauntingly, clamorously, and incessantly–it made its chief boast the point that its people were the gentry of the land, and that under the rebel banner the hosts of chivalry had assembled anew to make all manner of fine things the rule of life. Jack, writing and talking of his few months’ experience, dwelt with wonder upon the curious ignorance of the two peoples respecting each other. Mason and Dixon’s line separated two civilizations as markedly unlike as the peoples that confront each other on either side the Vistula or the Baltic Sea. The hierarchy not only seemed to love war for war’s sake; they possessed that feudal facalty, so incomprehensible in the middle ages, the power of making those who suffered most by it believe in it too, and sacrifice themselves for it.

The people–Jack sagaciously remarked, in discussing the topic with Olympia–seemed made for such a climate, rather than made by it. They would have been out of place in the bleak autumn blasts, and wan, colorless seasons of Acredale, where the sun, bleary and dim, furtively skirted the low horizon from November until April, as if ashamed to be identified with the glorious courser that rode the radiant summer sky. Here the sun came up of a morning–a little tardy, ’tis true, but quite in the manner of the people–warm and engaging, and when he went down in the afternoon he covered the western sky with a roseate mantle that fairly kept out the chill of the Northern night. “No wonder,” Jack said to his sister, watching this daily spectacle–“no wonder these people are warm, impulsive, and even energetic; here is an Italian climate without the enervating languor of that sensuous sunshine.”

The Atterbury house was the gayest in Richmond. Mrs. Atterbury, though the mother of a son in the army and a daughter with a coterie of her own in society, insisted on maintaining the leadership she had long held among the social forces of the capital. “All Richmond,” and that meant a good deal in a city whose women had been adored for beauty and wit on two continents, received Mrs. Atterbury’s bidding to her drawing-room with proud alacrity. Never had her “teas,” her _musicales_, her receptions, and _fetes_ been merrier or more convivial than during this memorable autumn that Jack and Olympia passed as prisoners of war. It was generally believed that the brother and sister were occult agents of the Federal power, negotiating with the Davis Cabinet, and Jack’s whimsical sobriety of speech and manner, contrasting with his former high animal spirits, carried out the notion of his being a secret ambassador.

It was at a reception given to the Cabinet by Mrs. Atterbury that the rumor of this accredited function came to Jack’s ears. “All Richmond” was among the guests. Olympia, in spite of her abhorrence of the cause, couldn’t resist a glow of sympathetic admiration of the women who, in dress, in speech, in tact, in all the artifices which make feminine diplomacy so potent an agency in statecraft, bent every faculty to inspire confidence in the new Administration. Mrs. Davis herself was not the least of the factors that made the President’s policy the creed of the land. There was no elaboration of costume–no obtrusive jewels. The most richly dressed dame in the company was a Madame Gannat, the deity of the most charming drawing-room at the capital. At her house society was always sure to meet the European noblemen traveling in the country, the _quasi_ official agents of France, England, and Austria, accredited to the new Confederacy, the generals of the Southern armies on leave in the city, and the political leaders able to snatch an evening’s relaxation. For some reason this potential personage let Olympia and Jack see that she was deeply interested in them. She took the young man’s arm late in the evening, and whispering, “Find a place where we can have a little talk,” accompanied him to a small apartment joining a conservatory, where Mrs. Atterbury transacted business with her agents.

“You must take down a book, so that, in case the curious remark us, our _tete-a-tete_ may not be regarded as conspiracy.”

“No one would be apt to associate you with such a thing,” Jack said, vaguely.

“I don’t know. Like all conspiracies, this Confederate comedy is suspicious.”

“Comedy, Mrs. Gannat? Why, I never saw people so earnest! I can’t imagine the surroundings of Cromwell more methodic.”

“Ah, yes; those who have all to lose by the crash when it comes, are bending every energy to impress the North that we are all of one mind down here; we are not. I am talking frankly with you, because my friend Mrs. Lanview has made me fully acquainted with your circumstances. I have asked you for a talk here because I dare not have you at my house. No one suspects my loyalty to this Davis masquerade; but there are many of us who are doing, and shall do, all the better work for the Union cause. You are just the man needed for a great work here; you are believed to be secretly in favor of the Confederate cause–an ambassador, in short. Now, the special purpose of this talk is this: The men caught at Rosedale three weeks ago are to be tried before a military court. If you and this young man Perley could escape before the event, it would be impossible to convict them. Mrs. Lanview tells me that you are very closely allied to the younger prisoner, Moore, and that for his sake you will do all in your power to avoid testifying.”

“I will cut out my tongue before a syllable from me shall bring danger to that noble fellow!”

“Exactly. I expected as much. Now, can you not manage to inspire Perley with the same sentiment? If you can, we feel confident that the court will be unable to secure evidence sufficient to convict. I leave the details to your own ingenuity. Your absence would deprive the judge-advocate of the vital witnesses, but your refusal to testify would only bring you into danger, and prolong the proceedings; and with time we hope to effect an escape. Sh! As I say, Mr. Sprague, the heart of the South beats with one impulse, the triumph of the noblest inspiration of a great people.”

The warning and sudden change in topic were caused by the apparition of a dame who came rustling in, a vision of youthful charms and vivaciousness.

“Mrs. Didier Rodney–Mr. Sprague,” Mrs. Gannat said, cordially. “You are sent by inspiration, for I am doing my poor best to convince this obdurate Yankee to turn from evil courses and do a duty by the country that will in future make his name illustrious.”

“And I have no doubt you have shaken his obstinacy, if there be any left,” Mrs. Rodney murmured, studying Jack attentively. “I have just been dining at the Executive Mansion, and Mr. Davis, hearing your name, lamented that women were not eligible to office. If they were, he declared that Mistress Gannat should be appointed ambassadress to France, and that, within ten days of her reception at the Tuileries, there would be a treaty of alliance signed between France and the Confederacy!”

“I take that as rather an admission of weakness on your President’s part,” Jack said, as the lady glanced inquiringly at him, “since it is a poor cause that requires the strongest advocates.”

“Ah! a Southern man would never have said a thing so uncivil as that,” Mrs. Rodney cried, reproachfully. “You pay Mrs. Gannat a compliment at the cost of the Confederacy.”

“And Mr. Davis paid me a compliment at the expense of the truth, so the account is squared,” the elder lady said, serenely.

“Well, Mr. Davis is here himself by this time, and you shall talk it out with him,” Mrs. Rodney retorted, as a rustle at the door announced new-comers. A half-dozen ladies came trooping in, among them Mrs. Davis and several of the Cabinet ladies.

“We heard you were here, Madame Gannat,” the President’s wife murmured, graciously. “And since you wouldn’t come to us, we have come to you.”

Mrs. Gannat arose to receive the great lady, and when she had exchanged salutations with the rest she presented Jack.

“Ah! the hero of the Rosedale affair,” and as Mrs. Davis said this she looked keenly at the young man. She was, he owned, an extremely graceful woman, of a mature beauty, admirable manner, and, as she talked, he remarked keen intelligence, with an occasional evidence of reading, if not high education. She was dressed in simpler taste than her “court,” as it was the fashion then to style the Cabinet group. A few jewels were half hidden in the rare lace that covered her bodice, but she was ungloved, and in no sense in the full-dress understood in the North, at a gathering of the sort. The talk became general. Jack, not knowing the personages, simply listened. There was animated discussion as to whether Mistress Judge this, and Mistress General that, or Mistress Senator the other, would be in the capital in time for the opening of the new Congress in December.

“Mr. Davis is very anxious to have the occasion made a grand one, and I reckon that every one of account in the Confederacy will he here.” Mrs. Davis said, with conviction.

“The scene will be worthy of a great painting, like the Long Parliament, or the meeting of the Three Estates, at Versailles,” Mrs. Rodney added, in a glow of anticipation.

This amusing pedantry rather taxed the historical knowledge of most of the ladies, and to divert the talk Mrs. Monteith, a Cabinet lady, said:

“Who has read the account in the Yankee papers of Lincoln and his wife at a reception of the diplomatic corps? It is too funny. The Lincoln woman was a Southerner. She has some good blood, and ought to know better. She was dressed like a dowdy, and when the ministers bowed she gave them her hand and said, ‘How d’ye do?'”

“It will really be a liberal education, to the North to have a capital like ours near them, where their public men can learn manners, and where Northern ladies can see how to conduct themselves in public,” Mrs. Rodney broke in, laughing. “It is not often a great people go to war for an idea, but we are taking up the gage of battle to teach our inferiors manners.”

“We taught them how to run at Manassas,” Mrs. Starlow, a Senator’s dame, remarked.

“I’m afraid they have learned the lesson so well that we shall never teach them how to stand,” Mrs. Davis added, gayly.

“Ah! friends, we are teaching each other how to die–let us not forget that,” Mrs. Gannat murmured, gently, and there was a sudden hush in the exchange of vivacities. Before the strain could he renewed, Mrs. Atterbury entered hastily, crying:

“The gentlemen are all distracted. We are going to have an old-time minuet, such as my mother used to dance with Justice Marshall and Tom Mayo. The President is going to lead with Mistress Wendolph, and all the rest of you are assigned, by command of the Executive.”

“Humph! a military despotism?” asked Mrs. Renfrew, a young bride of the Executive Mansion, whose husband was confidential adviser of the President. “I don’t think I shall obey. I shall show the honesty of my rebel blood by selecting my own partner, unless some one asks me very humbly.”

“Shall I go on my knees, Mrs. Renfrew?–I know no humbler attitude,” Jack said, hastily presenting himself.

“Oh, yes, sir; there is something humbler than the knees.”

“Yes? What, pray?”

“Repentance. Deny your name; no longer be a Montague–that is, a Yankee. Give me the hand of a rebel. Then I shall believe you.”

“I am a rebel.”

“Ah! you have been converted?”

“I never was perverted.”

“You have been with us all the time?”

“I have been here a long time!”

“And you are a rebel. Oh, I must tell Mr. Davis!”

“He knows it, I think.”

“Oh, no, he can not; for it was only a few moments since that he said to Mrs. Atterbury that the son of Senator Sprague, the friend of Calhoun and the comrade of Hayne, should be in the ranks of the young nobility upholding our sacred cause.”

“I am, however, a rebel–a rebel to all these fascinations I see about me, a rebel to your beauty, a rebel to all you desire.”

“Pah! you odious Yankee; I felt certain that you had not come to your senses.”

“I don’t think I ever lost them–though I never had enough to make such a spirit as yours lament their loss.” The rest of the ladies had passed out; and, as this repartee went on. Jack led his petulant companion into the large drawing-room, where he instantly recognized the President with Mrs. Wendolph on his arm. He towered above the mass of the dancers, eying the admiring groups with attentive scrutiny. He was in evening dress, but, unlike the larger number of the eminent partisans in the rooms, had no insignia, military or otherwise, to denote exalted rank.

As the President was to lead off, to keep up the character of a court minuet, the middle of the large room was left uncrowded. The music began what Jack thought at first was a funeral march, but with the first bars the tall, slender figure of the President bent almost double, while the lady seemed fairly seated on the floor, she bent down and back so far. She had adjusted a prodigious silken train, which swept and swirled in many bewildering folds as she slowly turned, courtesied, tripped forward and retreated, with such bending and twisting as would turn a ballet-master mad with envy. In all the movement of the overture the two dancers merely touched the tips of each other’s fingers, and when the solemn measure came to a close the President slid across the floor in one graceful, immense pirouette, handing the lady who confronted him, bent nearly to the ground, into her seat. There was an outburst of applause, and then the assembly took places, repeating, in as far as the mass would permit, the stately evolutions of the leader.

Later, a Virginia reel followed, danced with old-time _verve_, some of the more accomplished dancers bounding over the floor in pigeon-wings, such as were cut by the nimble a hundred years ago, when Richmond danced in honor of Washington and Lafayette. There was no end of drinking among the men, and as soon as the dancing seemed at its height the matrons began to gather into groups and send out signals to the younger ladies. The feast ended in drinking-bouts between dispersed bodies, who seemed to know the names of all the servants, and ordered as liberally as if in their own houses. In the _melee_ of separation, Jack felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Remember, every moment is precious. Many lives, perhaps a great campaign, depend upon your discretion, promptitude, and loyalty. Be ready when the signal reaches you, and remember you do not know me beyond the civility of a presentation, and do not like me.”

Jack had hardly turned as these words were whispered in his ear, and he gave the kind lady’s hand a warm pressure, as she moved away unremarked in the throng.

Jack, confiding Mrs. Gannat’s disclosures to Olympia, was elated by his sister’s enthusiasm, and was strengthened in his conviction that he was doing right by her approval.

“But you know, Polly, that–I–I, too, must be of the party? I must fly to the Union lines.”

“Of course you will! I should be ashamed of you were you to let such a chance pass. It is the only thing to do; it is your duty as a soldier to be with your flag; any means to get to it is justified. The Atterburys will feel hurt, perhaps outraged, but I can soon convince them that you have only done what Vincent would do, and whatever he would do they will soon see is right for you to do, even though it may bring them into temporary disgrace with the authorities. Of late I have begun to suspect that the Atterburys are to blame for your detention.”

“What do you mean to blame? Surely they can not hasten the slow business of negotiation?”

“No; but I’m convinced that they have given out hopes that you can be seduced into a soldier of secession. It is common talk in the drawing-rooms I have visited, where I was not always recognized as your sister. The silly tale has angered me, but for prudence sake I kept silent. I have heard in a score of places that the Atterburys were detaining you until another reverse to the Union arms should convince you of the uselessness of remaining in the service of the abolitionists.”

“O Polly, it must be a joke! They little know me, who could suspect me of such dishonor! Surely the Atterburys can’t think me so base as that. What have I ever done to justify such a stigma?”

“You wrong them there. They hold that you are wanting in loyalty to our father’s memory in espousing the cause of men who were his enemies–men who strove to ruin his political life. It is in being a soldier of the Union that they look upon you as recreant to the traditions of your family and your party.”

“Well, I shall make a hard struggle for escape. If I fail, they will at least see that I am in earnest–that I put country before family or party, or anything else that men hold dear. Heavens! to think of being held in such bondage! I could stand it with more patience if I were in prison sharing the hard lines of the fellows. But to be here; to be hand in glove with these boasting, audacious coxcombs, and forced to listen to their callow banter of us and our army, it makes me feel like a sneak and a traitor, and I’m glad that I see the end.”

“But do you see the end? Prudence is one of the wisest counselors in war. You are very rash, and you must take all your measures carefully. It won’t do to rush into a trap, as you did at Manassas; and, O Jack, what is to become of Dick? He is not in the lists. He has no standing here, and is at the mercy of any one who chooses to accuse him of being a spy.”

“By George, you’re right! I hadn’t thought of that. He must go with me. I had thought it better to leave him. He is so happy with Rosa that I fancied he would remain contentedly until the war ends. But he is in constant danger. He is forever tantalizing the people that visit the house, who make slighting allusions to the Northern armies, and very likely some rebel patriot will take the trouble to inquire about him.”

“But even if this were not a peril, he would never consent to remain here if you were gone. I think he would give up Rosa rather than be separated from you.”

“Yes, the impulsive little beggar, I believe he would,” Jack said, his eyes glistening. “That will compel us to take him into the secret. In fact, I don’t see how it can be managed without him; and then his testimony would convict the prisoners. I hadn’t thought of that. But now, Polly, about yourself. What’s to become of you?”

“I have my plans laid. Mrs. Myrason, the wife of one of Johnston’s generals, is going to the front next week. I shall insist to-night on accompanying her, as some of our physicians are going to be sent through the lines at the same time. There is really no reason for my remaining here, now that you are well. I have already broached the subject to Mrs. Atterbury, and I shall inform her at once that I am decided. She will not suspect anything, as she knew I was half-tempted to go North when mamma went. The important thing for you, now, is to give your whole mind to the rescue, and have no fears for me. If you can convince Dick to go with you, all will be well. If he proves obstinate, hand him over to me.” Jack laughed.

“Polly, you should have been the first-born of the house of Sprague; you have twice the sense that I have.”

“It isn’t sense that wins in war; it is daring and resolution, and you have all that.”

When Jack had cautiously laid the situation before his young Patroclus, that precocious warrior at once justified the confidence reposed in him.

“Rosa has promised to marry me as soon as the war is over. She can’t expect me to hang around here like a peg-top on a string. Besides, I wouldn’t stay where you are not, Jacko, even if I lost my sweetheart for good and all.”

There was a piteous quaver in the treble voice, and, forgetting that he was no longer a school-boy, he brushed his eyes furtively with his coat-sleeve, as Jack pretended preoccupation with his shoe-string.

“You’re a brick, Dick. I think I have confided that to you before–but you are a brick, made of the best straw in the field of life, and you shall be a general one of these days–your shrill voice shall let slip the dogs of war and cry havoc to the enemy. You shall return to Acredale–proud Acredale–your brows bound with victorious wreaths, and all the small boys perched on the spreading oaks to salute you.”

“I think I have heard something like that before, my blarneying Plantagenet. You shall be the Percy of the North, and command the great battle. You shall meet and vanquish fifty Harrys, and cry, ‘God for Union, liberty, and the laws.'”

“Bravo! You know your Shakespeare if you don’t know prudence. However, we’re plotters now, and you must take on your wisest humor. You must not breathe a word to Rosa. Love is a freebooter in confidences. It has no conscience, as it has no law. It is an immense friction on the sober relations of life. It is cousin to the god of lies–Mercury. So be warned that while your heart is Rosa’s your reason’s your country’s, your friends’, and you have a chance now to employ it to the profit of both! You must be ready to evade Rosa’s infinite questioning with innocent plausibilities, for you must bear in mind that, however much she may love you, she, like you, loves her cause, her people–more, in fact, for you have seen that these passionate Southerners have made a religion of the war, and, like all enthusiasts, they will go any lengths, deny all ties; glory, faith, in personal sacrifices and heart-wrenchings, to make the South triumph. So, without being false to your love, you must deceive, to be true to your country; for to lull love’s suspicions a man must regulate the two currents of his life, the heart and brain. Keep the heart in check and let the brain rule in such affairs as we have on hand.”

“Phew Jack! you talk like a college professor. You’re deeper than a well; and what was the other thing Mercutio said?”

“Ah! Mercutio said so much that Shakespeare got frightened and let Tybalt kill him. So beware of saying too much. That’s your great danger, Dick; your tongue is terrible–mostly to your friends.”

“Is it, indeed? I have a friend who doesn’t think so.”

“No, because she considers your tongue part of herself now.”

“I don’t see why she should; she has enough of her own.”

“In wooing-time no woman ever had enough tongue.”

“How changed you are from what you were at Acredale, Jack! I never heard you talk so deep and bookish.”

“I had no need at Acredale, Dick. There I was a boy–lived as a boy, romped as a boy, and loved boyish things. But a man ripens swiftly in war–you yourself have. You are no longer the mischief-maker and tom-boy that terrified your family and set the gossips agog in the dear old village. Mind broadens swiftly in war. That one dreadful day at Bull Run enlarged my faculties, or trained them rather, as much as a course in college. Something very serious came into my life that day. It had its effect on you too. It fairly revolutionized Vint; we may not have exactly put away boyishness and boyish things–please God, I hope to be a boy many a year yet–but we have been made to think as men, act as men, and realize that there are consequences and responsibilities in life such as we could not have realized in ten years in time of peace.”

Dick listened during this solemn comedy of immature doctrinal induction, his eyes dilating with wonder and admiration. Jack, in the _role_ of sage, delighted him, and he straightway confided to Rosa that he couldn’t understand how any girl could love another man while Jack was to be had.

“He’s so clever, so brave, so manly. He knows so much, and yet never takes the trouble to let any one see it. Ah, Rosa, I wish I were like Jack!”

“I think Jack’s very nice, but I know somebody that’s much nicer,” Rosa replied, busy with a rough material that was plainly intended for the Southern warriors.

“Ah! but if you really knew all about Jack, you wouldn’t look at anybody else,” Dick cried, pensively, tangling his long legs in the young girl’s work.

“There, you clumsy fellow; you’ve ruined this seam, and I must get this work done before noon. We’re all going to the provost prison to take garments to the recruits. You may come if you’ll be very good and help me with these supplies.”

“May I? I will sew on the buttons. Oh, you think I can’t? Just give me a needle.” And sure enough Dick, gravely arming himself from the store in Rosa’s “catch-all,” set to fastening the big buttons as composedly as if he had been brought up in a tailor’s shop. It was in this sartorial industry that Jack, coming in, presently discovered the pair.

“You’ve turned Dick into a seamstress, have you, Rosalind? You’re an amazing little magician. Dick’s sewing heretofore has been of the common boy-sort–wild oats.”

“No, Mr. Jack, I’m no magician. Dick is a very sensible fellow, and, like Richelieu in the play, he ekes out the lion’s skin with the fox’s.”

“I didn’t come to add to the stores of your wisdom. This is the day set, as I understand it, for us to go to the prison and relieve the distress of the victims of war. Do I understand that we, Dick and I, are to go and have our patriotic hearts torn by the sight of woes that fortune, in the shape of the Atterburys, keeps us from?”

“Of course you are. We couldn’t think of going without you. There, my work is done. We’ll have lunch and then start,” Rosa said, rising and directing Dick to fill the large wicker basket with the garments.

Fashion and idleness make strange pastimes. The recreation to which Jack and Dick were bidden was a visit to the melancholy shambles where the heterogeneous mass of unclassified prisoners were detained. It was a long, gabled building on the brink of the river, from whose low, grated windows the culprits could catch glimpses of the James, tumbling over its sedgy, sometimes rocky bed. A few yards from it arose the grim walls of what had been a tobacco-factory, now the never-to-be forgotten Libby Prison.

It was an animated and curious group that made up Jack’s party. They were piloted by a young aide on the staff of General Lee, and, as his entire mind was engrossed in making his court to Rosa, the pilgrims were given the widest latitude for investigation. On the lower tier he pointed out the cells of the Rosedale prisoners, where, as you may imagine, Jack and Dick, without giving a sign, kept their wits alert. Jones–the “most desperate of the conspirators against the President, the special agent of Butler”–was in a cell by himself, constantly guarded by a sentinel.

“This, Sprague,” said the young aide, lowering his voice as he came abreast of Jones’s cell, “is the man the Government has the strongest proof against. He is proved to have come into our lines from the Warwick River, to have managed to escape from Castle Thunder, and to have led the miscreants to Rosedale. Your own and young Perley’s testimony after that will swing him higher than a spy was ever swung before.”

These words, begun in a low tone, were made clearer and louder by the sudden cessation of chatter among the visiting group. Jones, who seemed to have come to his grating when the suppressed laughter sounded in the dark corridor, heard every word of the official’s speech. He was no longer the bearded desperado Jack had seen in the _melee_ at Rosedale–there was a certain distinction in the poise of the head, an inborn gentility in the impassive contemplation with which he met the furtive scrutiny of the curious visitors. Jack he eyed with something of surprise, but when Dick pushed suddenly in front of the timorous group of young women, he started, changed color, and averted his face; then, as if suddenly recalling himself, turned and devoured the lad with a strange, yearning tenderness. Dick met the gaze with his habitual easy gayety, and, turning to Jack, said, impulsively:

“I should never recognize this man as the bandit who fired the shot that night–are you really the Jones that choked and wounded me at Rosedale?” Dick advanced quite close to the wicked as he asked this.

“And who may you be, if I am permitted to ask a question?” the prisoner replied vaguely, all the time devouring the boy with his dilating eyes.

“I am Richard Perley, of Acredale, a soldier of the Union and a friend of all who suffer in its cause.” Dick murmured the last words so low that the group of visitors did not catch them, and, adding to them an emphasis of the eye that the prisoner seemed too agitated to notice, he continued, as Jack pushed nearer; “This is certainly not the man we saw at Rosedale. But I have seen you somewhere. Tell me, have I not?”

“I can tell you nothing–I–I” As he said this Jones backed against the wall. The guard sprang forward in alarm. The women, of course, cried out in many keys, most of them skurrying away toward the staircase.

“Water!” Jack cried. “Guard, have you no water handy?”

“No, sir; the canteen was broken, and there is none nearer than the guard-room.”

“Run and get some. I will see that the prisoner does not get out. Run!”

The aide had gallantly gone forward in the passage to reassure the ladies, and Jack, seizing the chance, for which the prisoner seemed to be prepared, whispered:

“Here is an auger, a chisel, and a knife. Secrete them. Work straight out under your window. We shall be ready for you by Wednesday night. Don’t fail to give a signal if anything happens that prevents your cutting through. There is only an old stone wall between you and the river. You must take precautions against the water, if it is high enough to reach your cut.”

Jones played his part admirably. He remained limp and stolid in the supporting arms of Jack, while Dick, hovering in the doorway, kept the prying remnant of the visitors, eager to witness the scene, at a safe distance. When the water came Jack yielded his place to the guard and the party moved on.

“Here we have a real Yankee, a regular nutmeg,” the young aide cried, as the party came to a room not far from Jones’s. “This youngster was one of the chief devils in the attack on Rosedale. The judge-advocate has tried every means to coax a confession from him, but without result. He is as gay as a bridegroom, and answers all threats with a joke.”

“Ah! the old Barney under all,” Jack said, half sadly.

“Do you know him, Mr. Sprague?”

“Like a brother. He is from my town.”

“Ah, perhaps you can convince him that his best course is open confession?”

“No, I fear not. He is very headstrong, and would rather have his joke on the gibbet than own himself in the wrong.”

“But, Mr. Jack, if you should talk to him, show him the wickedness of conspiring against a peaceful family, inciting a servile race to murder, I’m sure you could move him, and it would be such a comfort to have the criminals themselves expose the atrocious plot.”

This was said by Miss Delmayne, a niece of Mrs. Gannat. Jack caught her eye as she spoke, and instantly realized the covert meaning. How stupid he had been! Of course, Barney must be apprised of the rescue, and what time more propitious than the present? But, unfortunately, he had not provided himself with the tools for the emergency. What could be done? He suddenly remembered a bayonet he had seen near the guard-room. It was lying unnoticed on the bench.

“I must have a drink before I answer a plea so urgent. Amuse the prisoner while I slake my thirst.”

Barney was lying at the far end of the narrow, boarded cage. He raised his head as the group halted before his door, but gave no sign of interest as this dialogue was carried on:

“Prisoner,” said the aide, magisterially, “come to the door.”

“Jailer, what shall I come to the door for?” Barney mimicked indolently.

“Because I hid you, sir.”

“Not a reason in law, sir.”

“I’ll have the guard haul you here.”

“Then he’ll have a mighty poor haul, as King James said when he caught the Orange troopers in the Boyne.”

“I’ll teach you, sir, to defy a commissioned officer!”

“I’ve learned that already; but if you’re a school-teacher I’ll decline the verb ‘will’ for you.”

“Guard, hustle that beast forward.”

“Guard, don’t give yourself the trouble.” And Barney arose nimbly and came to the grating. “O captain, dear, why didn’t ye tell me there were ladies here? You could have spared your eloquence and your authority if you had told me that the star of beauty, the smile of angels, the–“

“Never mind, sir; be respectful, and wait till you’re spoken to.”

“Then, captain, dear, do you profit by your own advice; let the ladies talk. I’m all ears, as the rabbit said to the weasel.”

But at this interesting point of the combat Jack returned, and, pushing-to the door, cried, as if in surprise, “Hello, Barney, boy, what are you doing here?”

“Diverting the ladies, Jack, dear, and giving the captain a chance to practice command, for fear he’ll not get a show in battle.” The roar that saluted this retort subdued the bumptious cavalier, and he affected deep interest in the whispered questions of one of the young women in the rear of the group.

“You’re the same old Barney. Marc Anthony gave up the world for a kiss, you’d capitulate a kingdom for a joke,” Jack said, striving to catch Barney’s eye and warn him to be prudent.

“Well, Jack, dear, between the joke and the kiss, I think I’d go out of the world better satisfied with the kiss; at all events, it wouldn’t be dacent to say less with so many red lips forninst me,” and Barney winked untold admiration at the laughing group before him, all plainly delighted with his conquest of the captain.

“But, Barney, you should be thinking of more serious things.”

“Sure I’ve thought of nothing else for three months. The trees can’t go naked all the year; the brook can’t keep ice on it in summer; the swan sings before it dies; the grasshopper whirrs loudest when its grave is ready. Why shouldn’t I have me joke when I’ve had nothing but hard knocks, loneliness, and the company of the prison for half the year?”

“Poor fellow!” Rosa murmured in Dick’s ear, who had not trusted himself in sight of his old comrade. “I don’t believe he’s a bad man; I don’t believe he came to our house. Oh! pray, Mr. Jack, do talk with him. Encourage him to be frank, and we will get Mr. Davis to pardon him.”

“Pardon, is it, me dear? Sure there’s no pardon could be as sweet as your honest e’en–God be good to ye!–an’ if I were Peter after the third denial of me Maker, your sweet lips would drag the truth from me! What is it you would have me tell?”

“The captain, here, desires me to talk with you. He thinks that perhaps I can convince you of the wiser course to follow,” Jack said, with a meaning light in his eye.

“Oh, if that’s what’s wanted, I will listen to you ’till yer arms give out, as Judy McMoyne said, when Teddy tould his love, I promise, in advance, to do what you advise.”

“I knew you would,” Jack said, approvingly.–“Now, captain, if you can give me five minutes–“

The captain beckoned the guard, whispered a moment, and then said, exultingly:

“The guard will stand in the passage until you have finished with the prisoner. We shall await you in the porch.”

“Now, Barney, I must be brief, and you must not lose a syllable I say. Here, sit on the cot, so that I may slip this bayonet under the blanket. You can work through this wall with that. You must do it to-night and to-morrow. Be ready Thursday at daylight. You will be met on the outside either by Dick or myself. We have the route all arranged, and friends in many places to lull suspicion.”

“But I won’t stir a foot without Jones. Do you know who he is?” Barney whispered, eying Jack curiously.

“No other than that he seems a very desperate devil-may-care fellow. Who is he?”

“An agent and crony of Boone’s.”

“Good God!”

“It’s a long story I can’t tell it now, but if your plan takes him in, I’m ready, and will be on hand.”

“I have seen him, and have given him better tools than I have brought you for the work.”

“That’s all right. I ask nothing better than the bayonet. The other fellows that got out of Libby didn’t have nearly so good.”

“You know how I am fixed here. I have grown tired of this sort of hostage life, and I am going North with you. So, Barney, I beg of you to be careful, for other lives than your own are at stake. I should be specially hateful to the authorities if I were retaken–for the whole Southern people clamor to have an example made of the assassins of the President, as they call you.”

“Don’t fear, Jack; I’ll be quiet as a sucking pig in star light. I’ll be yer shadow and never open me mouth, even if a jug, big as Teddy Fin’s praty-patch, stud furninst me!”

“It isn’t your tongue I’m so much afraid of as your propensity to combat. You must resist that delight of yours–whacking stray heads and flourishing your big fists.”

“My fists, is it? Then I’ll engage to keep them still as O’Connell’s legs in Phoenix Square.”

“Now, I shall report that you are considering my advice. You must be very gentle and placating to the guard, and let on that you have something on your mind.”

“Indeed, I needn’t let on at all. I have as much on me mind as Biddy McGinniss had on her back when she carried Mick home from the gallows.”

“O Barney, Barney, you would joke if the halter were about your neck!”

“An’ why wouldn’t I, me bye? What chance would I have if I didn’t? I couldn’t joke when I was dead, could I?”

“Well, well, think over what I’ve said, and remember that penitence half absolves guilt.”

This was said for the benefit of the guard, who had approached as Jack arose to take his leave.

CHAPTER XXIII.

ALL’S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR.

Opportunity is an instinct to the man who dares. To him the law of the impossible has no meaning. To him there is no such thing as the unexpected. What he wants comes to pass, because he can not see danger, difficulty, nor any of the obstacles that daunt the prudent and the temporizing. It is, therefore, the impossible that is fulfilled in many of the crises of life. By the same token it is the foolhardy and preposterous thing that is most readily done in determinate conjunctures. We guard against the possible, but we take little note of the enterprises that involve foolhardiness or desperation. Daring has safeguards of its own that are understood only when mad ventures have come to successful issue. Helpless and hopeless as Jack’s situation seemed, the very poverty of his resources, helped the daring scheme of escape that filled his mind night and day during these apparently indolent weeks of pleasuring in the ranks of his enemies. Then, too, the arrogant self-confidence of his captors was an inestimable aid. Military discipline and provost vigilance were at their slackest stage in the rebel lines at this triumphant epoch in the fortunes of the Confederacy. The easily won combat at Bull Run had filled the authorities–as well as the rank and file–with overweening contempt for the resources of the North, or the enterprise of its soldiers. It was not until long after the time I am now writing about, that the prisoners were closely guarded and access refused to the idle and curious. But, as a matter of fact, nothing in the fortunes of our friends equals the truth of the thrilling and desperate chances taken by Northern captives to escape the lingering death of prison in the South. Since the war, volumes have been written of personal experience, amply attested, that would in romance receive the derisive mark of the critics. Danger daily met becomes a commonplace to men of resolution. Things which appall us when we read them become a simple part of our purpose when we live in an atmosphere of peril and put our hope only in ending the ordeal.

The incident I am narrating were the work of many hands. Mrs. Gannat had from the first given her heart to the Union cause. A woman of high standing in society, well known throughout the State for her mind, her manners, and her benevolence, it was not difficult for her, by adroit management, to aid such prisoners as fell into rebel hands during the early years of the war. Before Richmond became a mart in the modern sense, the Gannat mansion, set far back among the trees of a noble grove, was a shrine to the tradition loving citizens, for, beyond any Southern city, save perhaps New Orleans, Richmond folk cherished the memory of aristocratic and semi-regal ancestors. There were those still living when the war began, who had heard their fathers and mothers talk of the last royal Governor and the splendid state of the great noblemen who had flocked to the city of Powhatan when Virginia was the gem of England’s colonial coronet. The patrician caste of the city still held its own, aided by the helot hand of slavery. Among the most reverently considered in this sanctified group, Mrs. Gannat was, if not first, the conceded equal. She was the dowager of the ancient noblesse. The young Virginian received in her drawing-rooms carried away a distinction which was recognized throughout the State. The dame admitted to Mrs. Gannat’s semi-literary _levees_ was accepted as all that society demanded of its votaries.

In other years this great lady had been the admired center of the court circle in Washington. There she had known very intimately Senator–then Congressman–Sprague. Jack remembered vaguely the gossip of an engagement between his father and a famous Southern beauty; and when the lady in the course of the conspiring said, as they talked, “My son, I might have been your mother,” he knew that this gentle-voiced, kindly-eyed matron was the woman his father had loved and lost. I don’t propose to rehearse the ingenuities of the complicated plans whereby the group we are interested in were to be delivered. Mrs. Gannat’s perfect knowledge of the city, her intimacy with the President, Cabinet, and leading men, her vogue with the officials, all tended to make very simple and easy that which would seem in the telling hare-brained and impossible. Jack’s unique position, and Dick’s attitude of the half-acknowledged _fiance_ of an Atterbury, broke down bars that even Mrs. Gannat’s far-reaching sagacity might not have been able to cope with in certainty. The night chosen for the escape was fatefully propitious. The President was entertaining the newly arrived French delegate and the ministers Mason and Slidell, just appointed to the courts of St. James and the Tuileries. Everybody that was anybody was of the splendid company.

Jack, however, was tortured by a doubt of Dick’s constancy when it came to an abrupt quitting of his sweetheart. Poor lad, he fought the battle bravely, making no sign; and when Rosa, the picture of demure loveliness, in her girlish finery, asked him maliciously as the carriage drove toward the Executive Mansion–

“Don’t you feel like a traitor, you sly Yankee?” Dick gave a great groan and said:

“O Rosa, Rosa, I can’t go! I do feel like a traitor. I am a traitor.”

Jack, luckily, was sitting beside him, and brought his heel down on the lad’s toes with such emphasis that he uttered a cry of pain. Rosa was all solicitude at this.

“What is it, Richard; have I wounded you? Don’t mind my chatter; I only do it to tease you. He shall be a Yankee; he shall make nutmegs; he shall abuse the chivalrous South; he shall be what he likes; he sha’n’t be teased–” and she wound her bare arms about his neck, quite indifferent to the reproving nudges of mamma and the sad mirthfulness of Jack.

Dick found means in the noise of the chariot, and the crush they presently came into, for saying something that seemed to lessen the self-reproachful tone of the penitent, and, when they entered the modest portals of the presidency, Rosa was radiant and Dick equable, but not in his usual chattering volubility.

“You are sure you do not repent? You can stay if you choose,” Jack said, as they entered the dressing-room.

“Where you go, I go; what you say is right I know is right, and I will do it.” Dick looked away confusedly as he said this. They were surrounded by young officers, all of whom the two young men knew.

“Ah, ha, Mr. Perley! I have stolen a march on you; I have secured the first waltz from Miss Rosa,” a young man at the mirror cried, as Dick adjusted his gloves.

“Then, Captain Warrick, I’m likely to be a wall-flower, for the second, third, and fourth were promised yesterday.”

“Fortunes of war, my dear fellow–fortunes of war. You must lay siege to another fortress.”

“Dick,” Jack whispered, “it’s an omen. It will give us time to slip out and change our garments without the danger of excuses, for, though nothing is suspected, any incautious phrase may destroy us.”

“Don’t fear for me. I shall be prudent as a confessor. We can’t go, however, just yet. I must have a little talk with Rosa. I may never see her again. If you were in love and going from the light of her eye, perhaps never to see her again, you wouldn’t be so cool. We must, anyway, take the ladies to the host and hostess for presentation; then a few words and I am ready.” Dick was trembling visibly and blushing like a school-girl at first facing a class-day crowd. Jack’s heart went out to the lad, and he thought the chances about even that when the moment of trial came the boy’s resolution would give way. The ladies were waiting for them when they emerged into the corridors–Rosa began, prettily, to rally Dick on his tardiness. It took time to thread the constantly increasing crowd in the hallways, the corridors, and on the stairs, but they finally reached the group in which Mrs. Davis was receiving the confused salutations of the throng at the drawing-room door. As soon as this formality was ended, Rosa whisked Dick in one direction while Mrs. Atterbury asked Jack to take her to the library. Here, by a happy chance, she came upon a group of dowagers–friends of her youth from other towns–brought to the capital by the event, or their husbands’ official duties in the new government. Jack bowed low as he relinquished the good lady’s arm, feeling as if he were embarking on some odious treason, in view of her persistent and generous treatment of him and his.

“Now that you are among the friends of your youth, I will leave you; who knows whether I shall see you again?” he faltered, as she turned an affectionate glance upon him.

“Oh, you needn’t think that you can take _conge_ for good, Jack. I may want to dance during the night. If I do I shall certainly lay my commands upon you. You may devote yourself to the young people now, but I warn you I am not to be thrown over so easily. Besides, I want to present you to a dozen friends that you have not yet met at my house.”

“You will always know where to find me; but I am not so sure that I shall be as able, as I am willing, to come to you,” Jack said, trembling at the double meaning of his words.

“Oh, I know you’re dying to get to the dancers.”

“I can go to no one that it will give me more happiness to please than you. Indeed, I’m going into danger when I quit you. Give me your blessing, as if it were Vincent going to the wars.”

She had turned from the throng of ladies, who were discussing a political secret, and her eyes melted tenderly as Vincent’s name passed Jack’s lips. She touched his bowed head gently, saying:

“Why, how serious you are! One would think beauty a battery, and you on the way to charge.”

“You are right. It is a murderous ambush.”

“Well, if you regard it so seriously–God bless you in it.”

Her gentle eyes rested tenderly on him; he seized the kind hand, and, raising it to his lips in the gallant Southern fashion, turned and hurried away among the guests.

“Ah, Mrs. Atterbury, conquests at your age, from hand to lip, there’s but short interval,” and the President held up a warning finger as he came closer to the lady.

“Oh, no, age makes a long route between hand and lip–thirty years ago you kissed my hand, and you never reached the lip.”

“It wasn’t my fault that I didn’t.”

“Nor your misfortune either,” and Mrs. Atterbury glanced archly at her rival, Mrs. Davis, the mature beauty of the scene.

Dick, meanwhile, not so dexterous in expedients or ready in speech as his mentor, became wedged in an eddy, just outside the main stream, pouring drawing-room ward, so that, returning to the spot where they had separated, Jack did not, for the moment, discover him.

Rosa’s gayety and delight deepened the depression that made Dick so unlike himself. At first, in the exuberance of the scene, the girl did not heed this. She knew everybody, and, though in daily contact with