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Title: The Iron Game
       A Tale of the War

Author: Henry Francis Keenan

Release Date: November 12, 2003 [EBook #10062]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Transcriber's Note: The spelling inconsistencies of the original have
been retained in this etext.]


     The Iron Game

     A TALE OF THE WAR

     BY

     HENRY F. KEENAN


    "Heavy and solemn the cloudy column
     Over the green fields marching came,
     Measureless spread like a table bread
     For the cold grim dice of the iron game."




     1898




     TO

     BERNARD JOHN McGRANN

     WHOSE LIFE AND CONDUCT EMBODY AND ILLUSTRATE

     THE MANLINESS, MODESTY, AND WORTH

     THAT FANCY DELIGHTS TO EMBALM IN FICTION

     THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED

     BY ONE AMONG THE MANY WITNESSES OF HIS NOBLE CAREER

     HENRY F. KEENAN

     NEW YORK, _25th March, 1891_.




         CONTENTS



         BOOK I.

         _THE CARIBEES_.


  CHAPTER

     I.--THE BOY IN BLUE
    II.--FLAG AND FAITH
   III.--MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE
    IV.--GUELPH AND GHIBELLINE
     V.--A NAPOLEONIC EPIGRAM
    VI.--ON THE POTOMAC
   VII.--THE STEP THAT COSTS
  VIII.--AN ARMY WITH BANNERS
    IX.--"THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF ON THE FOLD"
     X.--BLOOD AND IRON
    XI.--THE LEGIONS OF VARUS



         BOOK II.

         _THE HOSTAGES_.


   XII.--THE AFTERMATH
  XIII.--A COMEDY OF TERRORS
   XIV.--UNDER TWO FLAGS
    XV.--ROSEDALE
   XVI.--A MASQUE IN ARCADY
  XVII.--TREASON AND STRATAGEMS
 XVIII.--A CAMPAIGN OF PLOTS
   XIX.--"HE EITHER FEARS HIS FATE TOO MUCH"
    XX.--A CATASTROPHE
   XXI.--THE STORY OF THE NIGHT
  XXII.--A CARPET-KNIGHT
 XXIII.--ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND WAR



         BOOK III.

         _THE DESERTERS._


  XXIV.--BETWEEN THE LINES
   XXV.--PHANTASMAGORIA
  XXVI.--IN THE UNION LINES
 XXVII.--"THE ABSENT ARE ALWAYS IN THE WRONG"
XXVIII.--THE WORLD WENT VERY ILL THEN
  XXIX.--A WOMAN'S REASON
   XXX.--A GAME OF CHANCE
  XXXI.--TWO BLADES OF THE SAME STEEL
 XXXII.--THE LOST CARIBEES
XXXIII.--FATHER ABRAHAM'S JOKE




BOOK I.

_THE CARIBEES_.




CHAPTER I.

THE BOY IN BLUE.


When expulsion from college, in his junior years, was visited upon Jack
Sprague, he straightway became the hero of Acredale. And, though the
grave faculty had felt constrained to vindicate college authority, it
was well known that they sympathized with the infraction of decorum that
obliged them to put this mark of disgrace upon one of the most promising
of their students.

All his young life Jack had dreamed of West Point and the years of
training that were to fit him for the glories of war. He knew the
battles of the Revolution as other boys knew the child-lore of the
nursery. He had the campaigns of Marlborough, the strategy of Turenne,
the inspirations of the great Frederick, and the prodigies of Napoleon,
as readily on the end of his tongue as his comrades had the struggles of
the Giant Killer or the tactics of Robinson Crusoe. When, inspired by
the promise of West Point, he had mastered the repugnant rubrics of the
village academy, the statesman of his district conferred the promised
nomination upon his school rival, Wesley Boone, Jack passionately
refused to pursue the arid paths of learning, and declared his purpose
of becoming a pirate, a scout, or some other equally fascinating child
of nature delightful to the boyish mind.

When Jack Sprague entered Warchester College, he carried with him the
light baggage of learning picked up at the Acredale Academy. At his
entrance to the sequestered quadrangles of Dessau Hall, Jack's frame of
mind was very much like the passionate discontent of the younger son of
a feudal lord whose discrepant birthright doomed him to the gown instead
of the sword.

Long before the senior year he had allured a chosen band about him who
shared his eager aspiration for war, and when the other fellows dawdled
in society or wrangled in debate, these young Alexanders set their tents
in the college campus and fought the campaigns of Frederick or Napoleon
over again. Jack did not give much heed to the menacing signs of civil
war that came day by day from the tempestuous spirits North and South. A
Democrat, as his fathers had been before him, he saw no probability of
the pomp and circumstance of glorious war in the noisy wrangling of
politicians. The defeat of Douglas, the Navarre of the young Democracy
of the North, amazed him: but all thought of Lincoln asserting the
national authority, and reviving the splendor of Jackson and Madison,
was looked upon as the step between the sublime and the ridiculous that
reasoning men refuse to consider.

When, however, the stupefying news came that a national garrison had
been fired upon by the South Carolinians, in Charleston Harbor, the
college boys took sides strongly. There were many in the classes from
Maryland and Virginia. These were as ardent in admiration of their
Southern compatriots as the Northern boys were for the insulted Union.
Months passed, and, although the forces of war were arraying themselves
behind the thin veil of compromise and negotiation, the public mind only
languidly convinced itself that actual war would come.

The college was divided into hostile camps. The "Secessionists," led by
Vincent Atterbury, Jack's old-time chief crony, went so far as to hoist
the flag of the Montgomery (Jeff Davis's) government on the campus pole,
one morning in April. A fierce fight followed, in which Jack's ardent
partisans made painful havoc with the limbs of the enemy--Atterbury,
their leader, being carted from the campus, under the horrified eyes of
the faculty, dying, as it was thought. Then followed expulsion. When the
solemn words were spoken in chapel, the culprit bore up with great
serenity. But when he announced that he had enlisted in the army, then
such an uproar, such an outburst, that the session was at an end. Even
the grave president looked sympathetic. The like of it was never seen in
a sober college since Antony with Cleopatra invaded the Academy at
Alexandria. The boys flung themselves upon the abashed Jack. They hugged
him, raised him on their shoulders, carried him out on the campus, and,
forming a ring round him, swore, in the classic form dear to collegians,
that they would follow him; that they would be his soldiers, and fight
for the _patria_ in danger.

"I have nothing to offer you, boys. I'm only sergeant; but if you will
join now, I'm authorized to swear you in provisionally," Jack said,
shrewdly, seizing the flood at high tide.

So soon as the names could be written the whole senior class
(forty-three) were enrolled. Jack refused the prayerful urgings of the
juniors, who pleaded tearfully to join him. But the president coming out
confirmed Jack's decision until the juniors could get the written
consent of their parents.

The recitations were sadly disjointed that day, and the excited
professors were glad when rest came. The humanities had received
disjointed exposition during that session. Jack had been summoned to the
president's sanctuary, where he had been received with a parental
tenderness that brought the tears to his big brown eyes.

"Ah, ha! soldiers mustn't know tears. You must be made of sterner stuff
now, sergeant," the doctor cried, cheerily, as the culprit stood
confusedly before him. "O Jack, Jack, why did you put this hard task
upon me? Why make me drive from Dessau the brightest fellow in the
classes? What will your mother say? I would as soon have lost my own
child as be forced to put this mark on you? But you know I am bound by
the laws of the college. You know I have time and again overlooked your
wild pranks. We have already suffered a good deal from the press for
winking at the sympathy the college has shown in this political quarrel."

"Yes, professor, I haven't a word to say. You did your duty. Now I want
you to bear witness how I do mine. I do not complain that I am condemned
rather through the form than the fact. I was carried out of my senses by
the sight of that rebel flag."

The Warchester press, known for many years as the most sprightly and
enterprising of the country, was too much taken up with the direful news
from Baltimore to even make a note of Jack Sprague's expulsion, and the
soldier boy was spared that mortification. Nor did he meet the tearful
lament and heart-broken remonstrance at home, to which he had looked
forward with lively dread. His friends in the village of Acredale were
so astonished by his blue regimentals that he reached the homestead door
unquestioned. His mother, at the dining-room window, caught sight of the
uniform, and did not recognize her son until she was almost smothered in
his hearty embrace.

"Why, John! What does this mean? What--what have you on?"

"Mother, I am twenty-two years old. A man who won't fight for his
country isn't a good son. He has no right to stay in a country that he
isn't willing to fight for!" and with this specious dictum he drew
himself up and met the astonished eyes of his sister Olympia, who had
been apprised of his coming. But the maternal fears clouded patriotic
conceptions where her darling was involved, and his mother sobbed:

"O Jack, Jack! what shall we do? How can we live without you! And oh, my
son, you are too young to go to the war. You will break down. You can't
manage a--a musket, and the--the heavy load the soldiers carry. My son,
don't break your mother's heart. Don't go--don't, Jack, Jack! What shall
I do?--O Polly, what shall we do?"

"What shall we do? Why, we'll just show Jack that all of war isn't in
soldiering; that the women who stay at home help the heroes, though they
may not take part in the battle. As to you and me, mamma, we shall be
the proudest women in Acredale, for our Jack's the first--" she was
going to say "boy," but, catching the coming protest in the warrior's
glowing eye, substituted "man" with timely magnanimity--"the first man
that volunteered from Acredale. And how shamed you would have been--we
would have been--if Jack hadn't kept up the tradition of the family! He
comes naturally by his sense of duty. Your father's father was the first
to join Gates at Saratoga. My father's father was the right hand of
Warren, at Bunker Hill! If ever blood ran like water in our Jack's
veins, I should put on--trousers and go to the war myself. I'm not sure
that I sha'n't as it is," and, affecting Spartan fortitude, Olympia
pretended to be deeply absorbed in adjusting a disarranged furbelow in
her attire to conceal the quavering in her voice and the dewy something
in her dark eyes. The mother, disconcerted by this defection where she
had counted on the blindest adhesion, sank back in the cane rocker,
helpless, speechless.

"Yes, mother, Polly is right. How could you ever lift up your head if it
were said that son of John Sprague's--Governor, Senator, minister
abroad--was the last to fly to his country's call? Why, Jackson would
turn in his grave if a son of John Sprague were not the first to take up
arms when the Union that he loved, as he loved his life, was in peril!"

Mrs. Sprague listened with woe-begone perplexity to these sounding
periods, conscious only that her darling, her adored scapegrace, had
suddenly turned serious, and was using the weapons she had so often
employed to justify his conduct. For it was using one of the standing
arms in the maternal arsenal, to remind the wild and headstrong lad that
his father had been Jackson's confidant, that he had been Governor of
Imperia, that he had enforced the demands of the United States upon
European statesmen, that after a life spent in the public service he had
died, reverenced by his party and by his neighbors. Jack, as an infant,
had been fondled by Webster, by Clay, and, one never-to-be-forgotten
day, Jackson, the Scipio of the republic, had placed his brawny hand
upon the infant's head and declared that he would be "worthy of Jack
Sprague, who was man enough to make two Kentuckians."

"But you--you, ought to be a colonel. Your father was a major-general in
the Mexican War at twenty-five. A Sprague can't be a private soldier!"
she cried, seizing on this as the only tenable ground where she could
begin the contest against the two children confederated against her.

"I don't want to owe everything to my father. This is a republic, mamma,
and a man is, or ought to be, what he makes himself. I saw in a paper,
the other day, that the Government has more brigadiers and colonels
and--and--officers than it knows what to do with. I saw it stated that a
stone thrown from Willard's Hotel in Washington hit a dozen brigadiers.
I want to earn a commission before I assume it. I'll be an officer soon
enough, no fear. I could have had a lieutenant's commission if I had
gone in Blandon's regiment. But I hate Blandon. He is one of those
canting sneaks father detested, and I won't serve under such cattle."

Mrs. Sprague, like millions of mothers in those days, was cruelly
divided in mind. When the neighbors felicitated her on the valor and
patriotism of Mr. Jack she was elated and fitfully reconciled. When, in
the long watches of the night, she reflected on the hardships,
temptations, the dreadful companions her darling must be thrown with,
country, lineage, everything faded into the dreadful reality that her
darling was in peril, body and soul. He was so like his father--gay,
impressionable, easily influenced--he would be saint or sinner, just as
his surroundings incited him. This was the woe that ate the mother's
heart; this was the sorrow that clouded millions of homes when mothers
saw their boys pranked out in the trappings of war.

Our jaunty Jack enjoyed the worship that came to him. He was the first
boy in blue that appeared in the sandy streets of Acredale. Never had
the rascal been so petted, so feted, so adored. He might have been a
pasha, had he been a Turk. The promising down on his upper lip--the
object of his own secret solicitude and Olympia's gibes during the
junior year--was quite worn away by the kissing he underwent among the
impulsive Jeannettes of the village, who had a vague notion that
soldiers, like sailors, were indurated for battle by adosculation. Jack
may have believed this himself, for he took no pains to disabuse the
maidens as to the inefficacy of the rite, and bore with galliard
fortitude the wear and tear of the nascent mustache, without which, to
his mind, a soldier would figure very much as a monk without a shaven
crown or a mandarin without a queue. And though presently big Tom
Tooker, chief of the rival faction in Acredale, gave his name to the
recruiting officer in Warchester, and a score more of Jack's rivals and
cronies, he was the soldier of the village. For hadn't he given up the
glory of graduation and the delights of "commencement" to take up his
musket for the Union? And then the fife was heard in the village
street--delicious airs from Arcady--and a great flag was flung out from
the post-office, and Master Jack was installed recruiting sergeant for
Colonel Ulrich Oswald's regiment, that was to be raised in Warchester
County. For Colonel Oswald, having failed in a third nomination for
Congress, had gallantly proffered his services to the Governor of the
State, and, in consideration of his influence with his German
compatriots, had been granted a commission, though with reluctance, as
he had supported the Democratic party and was not yet trusted in the
Republican councils.




CHAPTER II.

FLAG AND FAITH.


If Acredale had not been for a century the ancestral seat of the
Spragues, and in its widest sense typical of the suburban Northern town,
there would be merely an objective and extrinsic interest in portraying
its sequestered life, its monotonous activities. But Acredale was not
only a very complete reflex of Northern local sentiment; its war epoch
represented the normal conduct of every hamlet in the land during the
conflict with the South. Now that the war is becoming a memory, even to
those who were actors in it, the facts distorted and the incidents
warped to serve partisan ends or personal pique, the photograph of the
time may have its value.

Made up of thriving farmers and semi-retired city men, Acredale mingled
the simple conditions of a country village and the easy refinement of
city life. The houses were large, the grounds ornate and ample, the
society decorously convivial. People could be fine--at least they were
thought very fine--without going to the British isles to recast their
home manners or take hints for the fashioning of their grounds and
mansions. There was what would be called to-day the English air about
the place and some of the people; but it was an inheritance, not an
imitation. Save in the bustling business segment, abutting the four
corners, where the old United States road bore off westward to Bucephalo
and the lakes, the few score houses were set far back from the highway
in a wilderness of shrubbery, secluded by hedges and shaded by an almost
primeval growth of elms or maples. The whole hamlet might be mistaken
for a lordly park or an old-fashioned German Spa. Family marketing was
mostly done in Warchester; hence the village shops were like Arabian
bazaars, few but all-supplying. The most pregnant evidence of the
approach of modern ways that tinged the primitive color of the village
life, was the then new railway skirting furtively through the meadows on
the northern limits, as if decently ashamed of intruding upon such
idyllic tranquillity. The little Gothic station, cunningly hidden behind
a clustering grove of oaks at a respectful distance from the Corners,
like the lodge of a great estate, reconciled those who had at first
fought the iron mischief-maker.

The public edifices of the town--the Episcopal church, the free academy,
the bank, the young ladies' seminary--were very unlike such institutions
in the bustling, treeless towns of to-day. Corinthian columns and Greek
friezes adorned these architectural evidences of Acredale's affluence
and taste. The village had grown up on private grounds, conceded to the
public year by year as the children and dependents of the founders
increased. The Spragues were the founders, and they had never been
anxious to alienate their patrimony. Acredale is not now the sylvan
sanctuary of rural simplicity it was thirty years ago--before the war.
The febrile tentacles of Warchester had not yet reached out to make its
vernal recesses the court quarter for the "new rich." In Jack Sprague's
young warrior days the village was three miles from the most suburban
limits of the city. There was not even a horse-car, or, as fashionable
Warchesterians have it, a "tram," to remind the tranquil villagers that
life had any need more pressing than a jaunt to the post twice a day.
Some "city folks" did hold villas on the outskirts, but they used them
only for short seasons in the late summer, when the air at the lake
began to grow too sharp for outdoor pleasures.

Society in the place was patriarchal as an English shire town. The large
Sprague mansion, about which the village clustered at a respectful
distance, was the "Castle" of local phrase. Much of the glory of early
days had departed, however, when the Senator--Jack's papa--died. The
widow found herself unable to maintain the affluent state her lord had
loved. His legal practice, rather than the wide acres of his domain, had
supported a hospitality famous from Bucephalo to Washington. But with
prudent management the family had abundance, and, as Jack often said, he
was a fortune in himself. When the time came he would revive the
splendors his father loved to associate with the home of his ancestors.

"But where are we to get this splendor now, Jack?" Olympia inquired, as
the youth was dilating to his mother on the wonders to come. "Private
soldiers get just thirteen dollars a month; and if you continue
smoking--as I am informed all men do in the army--I expect to have to
stint my pin-money expenses to eke out your tobacco bills."

"Oh, I'll bring home glory. Napoleon said that every soldier carried a
marshal's _baton_ in his knapsack."

"I'm afraid you won't have room for it if you carry all the things that
I know of intended for you in this and other families."

"Yes; but, Polly, you know, or perhaps you don't know, a _baton_ is like
a college love--no matter how full your heart is, you can always find
room for another!"

"John," Mistress Sprague reproves mildly; "how can you? I don't like to
hear my son talk like that even in jest. Don't get the idea that it is
soldierly to treat sacred things with levity. Love is a very sacred
thing; it ought to be part of a man's religion; it was of your
father's."

"Then Jack must be a high priest, for there are a dozen girls here and
in the city who believe themselves enshrined in that elastic heart."

"Olympia, you are a baleful influence on your brother. If anything could
reconcile me to his going it is the thought that he will escape the
extraordinary speech and manners you have brought back from New York. Do
the Misses Pomfret graduate all their young ladies with such a tone and
laxity of speech as you have lately shown? Strangers would naturally
think that you had no training at home."

"Don't fear, mamma; strangers are not favored with my lighter vein; I
assume that for you and Jack, to keep your minds from graver things. I
preserve the senatorial suavity of speech and the Sprague austerity of
manner 'before folks,' as Aunt Merry would say. Which reminds me, Jack,
Kitty Moore declares that you are responsible for Barney's enlisting.
The family look to you to bring him home safe--a colonel at least."

"Well, by George, I like that! Why, the beggar was bent on going long
ago. He was the first to ask me to run away and enlist. The other day he
wanted me to have him sworn in, and I told him to wait until--until I
got a commission." Jack was going to say until he was older, but he
suddenly recollected that Barney was his own age, and that, in view of
his mother's argument, struck him as unfortunate. He saw Olympia smiling
mischievously and turned the subject abruptly. "I suppose you know,
Polly, that Vincent is going home to join the rebels?"

"Is he?" She had turned swiftly to gather a ball of worsted, and when it
was secured began to rummage in her work-basket for something that
seemed from her intentness to be vitally necessary to her at the moment.

"Yes, he wrote to President Grandison that he should go as soon as his
passports and remittances came. He's promised a captain's commission.
I'm very, very sorry. Vint is the noblest of fellows. I hate to think of
him in the rebel army."

"That's the reason you half killed him the other day, I suppose,"
Olympia said, sweetly, still investigating the contents of the basket.

"What, John, you've not been in a broil--fighting?" and Mistress Sprague
could not, even in imagination, go further in such an odious direction,
and let her eyes finish the interrogatory.

Jack, a good deal subdued by what Olympia had left unsaid, rather than
what she had said, blurted out: "It was a campus shindy: Vint led the
rebel side and they got licked, that's all."

"Oh, was that all?" Olympia had ended her search in the basket and
fastened a glance of satiric good humor upon the culprit, which did not
tend to relieve the awkwardness of the moment. Jack blushed under the
glance and began to hum an air from Figaro, as if the conversation had
ebbed into an impass from which it could only be rescued by a
lively air.

Mrs. Sprague looked at the uneasy warrior, then at her daughter, darting
the crochet-needles placidly through the wool.

"Well," she said, "never mind what's past; we must have Vincent out here
for a visit before he goes. I must send Mrs. Atterbury a number of
things. I hope she won't think that we intend to let the war make any
difference in our feeling toward the family."

Jack was very glad to set out at once for his quondam foe, and in ten
minutes was driving down the road to Warchester. Vincent's bruises were
nearly healed, and he saluted Jack as a "chum" rather than as the agent
of his late discomfiture.

"I'm mighty glad you've come to day. I didn't know whether you meant to
break off or not. I don't cherish any rancor. I don't see any use in
carrying the war into friendships. We made the best fight we could. We
did better than your side. You had the most men and the biggest fellows.
We showed good pluck, if we did get licked. If you hadn't come to-day I
should have been gone without seeing you, for I began to think that you
were as narrow as these prating abolitionists. My commission is ready
for me now at Richmond, and I'm just aching to get my regimentals on.
I'm to be with Johnston in the Shenandoah, you know, and--"

"You mustn't tell me your army plans, Vint. I'm a soldier," and Jack
drew himself up with martial pomposity, "and--and--perhaps I ought to
arrest you now as an enemy, you know. I will look in the articles of war
and find out my duty in such cases." Jack waved his arm reassuringly, as
if to bid the rebel take heart for the moment--he would not hurry in the
matter. Vincent eyed his comrade with such a woe-begone mingling of
alarm and comic indignation that Jack forgot his possible part as agent
of his country's laws, and said, soothingly: "Never mind, Vint, I'm not
really a full soldier in the technical sense until the regiment is
mustered in at Washington. After that, of course, you know very well it
would he treason to give aid or comfort to the country's enemies."

Vincent didn't leave next day, nor for a good many days. He seemed to
get a good deal of "aid and comfort" from those who should have been his
enemies. Mistress Sprague found that he was not in a fit state to
travel; that he needed nursing to prepare him for his journey, and that
no place was so fit as the great guest-chamber in the baronial Sprague
mansion, near his friend Jack. Strange to say, Vincent's eagerness to
get to Richmond and his shoulder-straps were forgotten in the agreeable
pastimes of the big house, where he spent hours enlightening Olympia on
the wonders the Southern soldiers were to perform and the glory that he
(Vincent) was to win. He went of a morning to the post-office, where
Jack was installed recruiting-agent for Acredale township, and made very
merry over the homespun stuff enrolled in defense of the Union.

"Our strapping cavaliers will make short work of your gawky bumpkins;"
he remarked to Jack as the recruits loitered about the wide, shaded
streets, waiting to be forwarded to the rendezvous.

"Don't be too sure of that. These young, boyish-looking fellows are just
the sort of men that met the British at Bunker Hill. They laughed too,
when they saw them; but they didn't laugh after they met them, nor will
your cavaliers," Jack cried, loftily.

"But there's not a full-grown man among all these I've seen. How do you
suppose they are to endure march and battle? None of them can ride. All
our young men ride, and cavalry is the main thing in modern armies."

In the Sprague parlors conversation of this risky sort was eschewed.
Mistress Sprague was anxious that the son of her oldest friend should
return to his mother with only the memory of amiable hospitality in his
heart to show that, although war raged between the people, families were
still friends. Vincent's mother had been one of Mistress Sprague's
bridesmaids, and it was her wish that the children might grow up in the
old kindly ties. So Vincent was made much of. There were companies every
night, and drives and boating in the afternoons, and such merry-making
as it was thought a lad of his years would enjoy. He was a very
entertaining guest; that all Acredale had known in the old vacations
when, with his sister, the pretty Rosa, he spent a summer with
the Spragues.

But, now that there was to be a separation involving the unknown in its
vaguest form, the lad was treated with a tenderness that made the swift
days very sweet to the young rebel. It was from Olympia that he met the
only distinct formality in the manners of his hosts. He had known and
adored her in a boyish way for years, and now, as he contemplated going,
he thought that she ought to exhibit something of the old-time warmth.
In other days she had ridden, walked, and flirted to his heart's desire.
Now she avoided him when Jack was not at hand, and when she talked it
was in a flippant vein that drove him wild with baffled hope. The day
before he was to bid the kind house adieu he had his wish. She was
riding with him over the shaded roadway that curves in bewildering
beauty toward the lake. She seemed in a gentler mood than he had lately
seen her. They rode slowly side by side, but Vincent had a dismal
awkwardness of speech in whimsical contrast to his habitual fluency.

"There's only one thing hateful to me in this war," he said, caressing
the arching neck of his horse, "and that is, the better we do our duty
as soldiers the more sorrow we must bring upon our own friends."

"That's a rather solemn view to take of what Jack regards as the path of
glory."

"Oh, you know what I mean: under the flag there can or ought to be no
friendships--the bullet sent from the musket, the sword drawn in light,
must be aimed blindly. It might be my fate, for example, to meet
Jack, to--to--"

"Yes," Olympia laughed demurely, ignoring the sentimental aspect of
Vincent's remark. "Yes, that might paralyze the arm of valor; but, then,
you and Jack have met before, when duty demanded one thing and affection
another: I don't see that the dilemma softened the blows, or that either
of you are any the worse for them."

Vincent was the real Southerner of his epoch--impulsive, sentimental,
ardent in all that he espoused, without the slightest notion of humor,
though imaginative as a dreamer; love, war, and his State, Virginia,
were passions that he thought it a duty to uphold at any and all times.
He colored under the girl's satiric sally. If she had been a man he
would have bid her to battle on the spot. Her sly fun and gentle malice
he resented as insulting, coarse, and unwomanly. He flashed a look of
piteous, surprised reproach at her as she flecked the flies from the
neck of her horse. He rode along moodily--too angry, too wretched to
trust himself to speak, for he felt sure he must say something bitter.
But, as she gave no sign of resuming the discourse, he was forced to
take up the burden again. Venturing nearer her side, he said in a
conciliating, argumentative tone, as if he had not heard the
foregoing speech:

"Do you know, it seems to me, Olympia, that you of the North do not seem
to realize the seriousness of the war, the determination of our side to
make the South free? Here you go about the common business of life,
parties, balls, dress, and all the follies of peace, as if war could not
affect you at all. Your newspapers are full of coarse jokes at the
expense of your own soldiers, your own President. There seems no
devotion to your own cause, such as we feel in the South. I believe that
if put to a vote more than half the North would side with us to-day."




CHAPTER III.

MALBROOK S'EN VA-T-EN GUERRE.


Olympia had been jogging along, apparently oblivious to everything but
the blazing vision of sun and cloud above the lake, purpling shapes of
mirage, reflecting the smooth surface of the glowing water. But as the
young man's voice--fallen into a melodious murmur--ceased, she took up
the theme with unexpected earnestness.

"That's the error the South has made from the first. You know my father
was a public man. I have been educated more at our dinner-table and in
his talks with guests than at school. That is, the things that have
taken strongest hold of my mind young girls rarely hear or understand.
Now I think I can tell you something that may be of value to you in
official places where you are going. The North is not only in
earnest--it is religiously in earnest. If you know Puritan history you
know what that means. For example: if Jack had hesitated a moment or
made delay to get rank in the army, I should have abhorred him. So would
our mother, though she seems to be dismayed at his serving as a common
soldier. I adore Jack; I think him the finest, the most perfect nature
after my father's--that lives. But I give him up gladly, because to keep
him would be to degrade him. We know that he may fall; that he may come
back to us a cripple or worse. But, as you see, we make no sign. Not a
line of routine has been changed in the house. Jack will march away and
never see a tear in my eye or feel my pulse tremble. It is not in our
Northern blood to give much expression to sentiment, but we feel none
the less deeply--much more deeply, I think, than you exuberant
Southerners; you are impulsive, mercurial, and fickle."

"Oh, don't say that: I can't bear to hear you say it; we have deep
feelings, we are constant, true as steel, chivalrous--"

"Yes, you are delightful people; but you are always living in the past.
Shall I say it? You are womanlike; you can't reason. What you want at
the moment is right, and only that; with us nothing is real until we
have tried and proved it. If you count on Northern apathy you will soon
see your mistake. When Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter the North was of
one mind, and will stay so until all is again as it was."

"Pray don't let us talk on this subject. I'm free to own that it does
not interest me. Then," he added adroitly, "you are readier in argument
than I, because you were brought up in it. But what I want to say is,
that it seems base for me to turn upon the goodness I have met in this
house, and--and--"

"But you need not turn. In battle do your duty like a man. If it should
fall to you to do a kindness to the wounded, do it in memory of the
friends you have here. War is less savage now than it was when your
ancestors and mine tortured each other in the name of God and the king."

"All murder is done for love of one sort or another: war is love of
country; revenge is love of some one else--men rarely kill from hate,"
Vincent stammered, his heart beating at the nearness of what he was
dying to say.

"In that case I hope I shall he hated. I shall shun people who love me,"
and with that she struck the horse a lively tap and soon was far ahead
of her tongue-tied wooer. Was this a challenge? Vincent asked himself,
as he sped after her. When he reached her side the tender words were
chilled on his lips, for Olympia had in her laughing eye the, to him,
odious expression he saw there when she made the irritating speech about
himself and Jack a few minutes before. Fearing a teasing retort, he
bridled the tender outburst and rode along pensively, revolving pretexts
for another day's stay in Acredale. But when they reached home he found
an imperative mandate to set out at once, as his lingering in the North
was subjecting himself and kinsmen to doubt among the zealous partisans
of the Davis party. Olympia was alone in the library when he ran down to
tell Jack that he must start at once. He took it as an omen, and said,
confusedly:

"It is decided; I must go in the morning."

As this had been the plan all along, she looked up at him in surprise,
not knowing, of course, that he had been thinking of putting off the
fixed time.

"Yes, everything has been made ready; Jack will take you to Warchester,
and we shall drive over to see you _en route_."

"It is fortunate the letter from my mother came to-night." He stood
quite, over her chair, his eyes glittering strangely, his
manner excited.

"Do you know what they think at home? They say that I--I am not true to
my cause; that my heart is with the North--that I want to stay here."

"They won't think that when they hear you, as we have, breathing fury
and wrath against the Lincolnites," Olympia briskly replied, as if to
proffer her services as witness to his misguided loyalty to the South.

"Ah, don't be so ungenerous, now--at this time. I never talk like that
now--here--never before you." He hesitated, and his voice dropped. "Why
will you put a fellow in a ridiculous light? Your sneers almost make me
ashamed of my honest pride in my State--my enthusiasm for our
sacred cause."

"Deep feeling isn't so easily shaken; true love should brave all
things--even sneers and blows."

"If I should tell you that I loved somebody, I am sure you would make me
seem ridiculous or ignorant of my own mind."

"Then pray be wise and don't tell me. It's bad enough to be in love,
without being photographed in the agony."

He looked at her in angry perplexity. Could she ever be serious? Was all
the tenderness of the past only heedless coquetry? Had she danced with
him, drove with him, sailed with him, walked in the moonlight and made
much of him in mere wanton mischief? What right had she to be so pretty
and so--without heart or sensibility? A Southern girl with the word love
on a young man's lips would have become a Circe of seductive wooing
until the tale were told, even though she could not give her heart
in return.

"I--I am going to-morrow, you know, and--" Then he almost laughed
himself, for the droll inconsequence of this intelligence, after what
had passed, touched even his small sense of humor. "O Olympia, I mean
that I shall be far away: that I shall not see you after to-morrow.
Won't you say something to encourage me--to give me heart for
the future?"

"Let me see," and she leaned on her elbow musingly, as if construing his
words literally, and quite unaware of the tender intent of his prayer.
"It ought to be a line to go on your sword--there's where you have the
advantage of poor Jack, he has only a musket. But, no, you being a
Southerner, have a coat of arms, and the line must go on that. I used to
know plenty of stirring phrases suitable to young men setting out for
the wars. Perhaps you know them, too; they are to be found in the
copy-books. 'The pen is mightier than the sword' wouldn't do, would it?
Pens are only fit for poets and men of peace? We should have something
brief and epigrammatic. 'That hour is regal when the sentinel mounts on
guard.' There is sublimity in that, but you won't go on guard, being
an officer.

     'No blood-stained woes in mankind's story
      Should daunt the heart that's set on glory.'

"That's too trivial--the sort of doggerel for newspaper poets' corners
rather than a warrior's shield.

     'Think on the perils that environ
      The man that meddles with cold iron!'

"That's too much like a caution, and a soldier's motto should urge to
daring. So we'll none of that. What do you say to the distich in honor
of your great ancestor, Pocahontas's husband, John Smith:

     'I never yet knew a warrior but thee,
      From wine, tobacco, debt, and vice so free.'

"Perhaps, however, that might be regarded as vaunting over your
comrades, who, I've no doubt, relax the tedium of war in temperate
indulgence of some of these vices. 'Put up thy sword; states may be
saved without it,' would sound out of keeping for a warrior whose States
drew the sword when the olive-branch was offered them. You see, I can
not select any text quite suitable to your case?"

"O Olympia, I did not believe you could be so heartless! Be serious."

"Well, Mr. Soldier, if you insist, I know nothing better for a warrior
to bear in mind in war than these simple lines:

     'The bravest are the tenderest,
       The loving are the daring.'"

"You are right, Olympia--those are noble lines. It gives me courage; the
loving are the daring! I love you; I dare to tell you that I love you!
Ah, Olympia, I love you so well that I have been traitor to my
fatherland! I have loitered here in the hope that you would give me some
sign--some word to take with me in the dark path Fate has set for me
to follow."

He came back to her side now, passion and zeal in his shining eyes,
ardent, elate, expectant. But she put the hand behind her that he
reached out to seize as he fell upon one knee by her chair. Her voice
softened and a warm light shone in her eye when she spoke:

"I beg you to get up; we cold-blooded people up here don't understand
that old-fashioned way." As he started back with something like a groan,
she gave him a quick glance that electrified him. He seized her hand
before she could snatch it away and pressed it to his lips.

"Pray be serious. You are too young to talk of love."

"I am twenty-two; my father was married at nineteen."

"No, dear Vincent, don't talk of this now. You don't know your own mind
yet. I am sure that when you go home and think over the matter you will
see that it would be impossible, but, even if you were sure of yourself,
I never could think of it. You are going to take up arms against all I
hold dear and sacred. If I were your affianced, with the love for you
that you deserve, I would break the pledge when you joined in arms
against my family and country."

"You have known for years, Olympia, that I loved you; that I was only
waiting to finish college to tell you of my love. Why didn't you
tell me--"

"Tell you what?"

"I say, Polly," Jack cried, bursting in, radiant and eager. "I have the
last man of the one hundred--" Observing Vincent he stopped. It seemed
to him a sort of treason to talk of his regiment before the man who was
so soon to be in the ranks against them. "Oh, I can't tell our secrets
before the enemy," he ended, jocosely. The word went to Vincent's heart
like the prod of sharp steel. He gave Olympia one pathetic glance, and,
without a word, hastened from the room. In spite of a great many adroit
efforts, Vincent could get no further speech with Olympia alone that
night. Early in the morning he was driven, with Mrs. Sprague and Jack to
the station. Olympia sent down excuses and adieus, alleging some not
incredible ailing of the sort that is always gallantly at the disposal
of damsels not minded to do things people expect.

Presently, when the lorn lover had been gone three days, a letter came
from Washington to Olympia, and, though it was handed to her by her
mother, the maiden made no proffer to confide its contents to the
naturally curious parent. But we, who can look over the reader's
shoulder, need not be kept in the dark.

    "Dear Olympia" (the letter said), "it was hard to leave
    without a last word. All the way here I have been thinking
    of our little talk--if that can be called a talk where one
    side has lost his senses and the other is trifling or mystifying.
    I told you that I loved you. I thrill even yet with
    the joy of that. You are so wayward and capricious, so
    coy, that I began to fear that I never could get your car long
    enough to tell you what I felt you must have long known. You
    didn't say that you loved me; but, dear Olympia, neither did
    you say that you did not. The rose has fallen on the hem
    of your robe. When its fragrance steals into your senses,
    you will stoop and put the blossom in your bosom. It is the
    war that divides us, you say. It will soon pass. And who
    knows what may happen to make you glad that, since there
    must be strife, I am one of the enemy rather than a stranger?
    I feel that we shall be brought together in danger, when it
    may be my happiness to serve you or yours. But, even if I
    am not so favored, I shall still ask your love. You know
    our Southern ways. Whom I love my mother loves. But
    my mother and sister Rosa have loved you long and dearly.
    They have known you as long as I have, and when you consent
    to come to us you will take no stranger's place in the
    heart and home of the family. Remember the motto you
    gave me. You are a woman, therefore tender; I am daring,
    Heaven knows, in aspiring to such a reward as your love.
    But I dare to love you; if you cast that love from you, love
    will lose its tenderness, bravery its daring. One of the high
    mountains of hope whereon I sun my fainting soul is the
    knowledge that you love no one else. I won't say that you
    should in love hold to the ride 'first come first served,' but I
    do say, 'first dare, first win.' And when you reflect on what
    you said about the accident of war separating us, just put
    Jack in my place. What would you think of a Southern
    girl who should refuse him because he fought on the side of
    his family and his State? What is the old line? 'I could
    not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not honor more.' I'm
    sure I couldn't ask your love if there were not honor in my
    own. The war will be over and forgotten in six months,
    but you and I are young; we have long years before us.
    The right will win in the contest, and, right or wrong, I am
    yours, and only yours, while there are life in my body and
    hope in my soul. VINCENT."

In a little glow of what was plainly not displeasure, the young woman
"filed" this "writ of pre-emption," as Jack afterward called it, in
careful hiding, and resumed meditation of the writer. It could not now
be answered, for letters between the lines were subject to censorship,
and Olympia perhaps shrank from adding to her lover's misery by exposing
his rejection to the unfeeling eyes of the postal agents. There was pity
in the resolve as well as prudence. Had Vincent been able to read the
workings of the lady's mind, he would have donned his rebel gray with
more buoyant joy that day in Richmond. Another ally of the absent came
in the course of the day. Miss Boone, the daughter of the opulent
contractor and chief local magnate, called to plan work for the
soldiers. Vincent's name being mentioned, Miss Boone said, in the
apparent effusion of girlish intimacy:

"I like Mr. Atterbury very much. He is a charming fellow. But, for your
family's sake, I am glad he is away from this house." At Olympia's
surprised start she nodded as if to emphasize this, continuing: "Yes,
and for good reasons. You know our house is the high court of
abolitionism? Well, papa's cronies have made Mr. Atterbury's visit cause
of suspicion."

"Suspicion? What do you mean?"

Miss Boone was paling and blushing painfully. "Dear Olympia, I hate to
say it; but you should know it. You will hear it elsewhere. Cruel things
like this always come out. You know that feeling has been very bitter
here since the dreadful attack on the Massachusetts soldiers in
Baltimore? Radicals make no distinction between Democrats and rebels,
and--I'm to say it--but Mr. Atterbury is charged with being a spy
here--and--and your family, being Democrats, are thought to sympathize
with the rebels. Of course, your friends know better. I and many more
know that the Atterburys and Spragues have been intimate for thirty
years. But in war-time people seem to lose their senses and change their
opinions like lake breezes; prejudices grow like gourds, and the people
who do least and talk loudest make public sentiment."

"What an outrageous state of things!" Olympia cried, hotly. "Our family
sympathize with traitors indeed! Why, it was my father who, in the
Senate, upheld Jackson when he stamped out South Carolina in its
rebellion. Oh! it is monstrous, such a calumny. Why, just think of it!
The only man in the family is a private soldier, when he might have been
high in rank, with such influences as we could bring to bear. O Kate! it
almost makes one pray for a defeat to punish such ingrates!"

"Yes; but for Heaven's sake don't let any one hear you say such a
thing--for your brother's sake! He is already the victim of the feeling
I have spoken about. He was to have had the captaincy of the first one
hundred men he raised. But the Governor has been made to change the
usual rule, and the colonel is to appoint the officers."

"And Jack isn't to have a commission?"

"No, not now; only men of the war party are to be made officers."

"Good heavens! Nobody could be more eager for the war than Jack. It is
his passion. His delight in it shocks my mother, who hates war. What
stronger evidence of sympathy for the cause could he show than joining
the army before finishing college?"

"But he is a Democrat--and--and--only Republicans are to be trusted at
first." Miss Boone blushed as she stammered this, for it was her own
father, in his function as chairman of the war committee, who had
insisted upon this discrimination. Worse still, but this Kate did not
mention--it was Boone's own work that kept Jack from his expected
epaulets. There had long been a feud between Boone and the late Senator
Sprague, and Olympia conjectured most of what the daughter reserved.

"Your brother has done wonders, everybody says; he has the finest
fellows in the township, and he ought to be colonel, at least," Miss
Boone said, rising to go.

"Oh, I have no fear that he will not win his way," Olympia replied,
cheerfully. "The brave in battle are captains, no matter what rank
they hold."

The odious partisanship and ready calumny of her own compatriots gave a
strange bent to her mind in dealing with another problem. Vincent, too,
had suffered from the wretched battle of his family's enemies. After
all, might he not be right? Might the war not be a mere game of havoc
played by the base and unscrupulous? Country, right or wrong, had been
her family watchword since her ancestor flew to fight the British
invaders. It was Jack's watchword, too, and his conduct in battle should
put these wretches to shame. She thought more kindly of the rebel in
this vengeful mood, and straightway ran up-stairs, where, sitting by the
open window and lulled by the piping of the robins, she took the letter
from its pretty covert, read it again with heightened color, and,
smiling rosily at the face she saw in the mirror, raised it to her lips
and sighed softly.

When a whole people have but one thought in mind that thought becomes
mania. Acredale had but this one thought, "Beat rebellion and punish
rebels." "On to Richmond!" was the cry, and forming ranks to go there
the business that everybody took in hand. These had been great days to
Jack. He began to feel something of the burden that a feudal chief must
have borne at the summoning of the clans. So soon as it spread in the
country-side that "young Sprague had 'listed," all the "ageable" sons of
the soil were fired with a burning zeal to take up arms and bear him
company. Boys from sixteen to twenty these were for the most part, and
there was bitter grumbling when Jack firmly refused to take the names of
any under twenty. Some he solaced with a gun, a pistol, or such object
as he knew was dear to the country boy's heart. They returned to the
relieved hearthstone loud in Jack's praise, having his promise to enlist
them when they were twenty, if the war lasted so long; and if the wise
smiled at this, wasn't it well known that the great army now gathering
was to set out at latest by the 4th of July? And didn't everybody know
that it was going to march direct to Richmond? There were trying scenes
too, in the _role_ Jack had assumed so gayly. He began to see that war
had ministers of pain and sorrow hardly less cruel than those dealing
death and wounds. Tearful parents came to him day by day to beg his help
in restoring sons who had fled to the wars. Others came to warn him that
if their boys applied to him he must refuse them, as they were
under age.

In this list the Perley sisters, Dick's three maiden aunts, came on a
respectful embassy to implore Jack to discourage their nephew, who had
quite deserted school and gave all his time to drilling with the
"college squad." Jack pledged himself that he would hand Dick over to
the justice of the peace, to be detained at the house of refuge, if he
didn't give up his evil designs. But, when that young aspirant appeared,
so soon as his aunts had gone, and reminded Jack of years of intimate
companionship in dare-deviltry, the elder saw that his own safety would
be in flight, and that night, his company was removed to Warchester.
There in the great camp, surrounded by sentinels, his Acredale cronies
were shut out, and Jack began in earnest his soldier life.




CHAPTER IV.

GUELPH AND GHIBELLINE.


The shifting of Jack's company to the regimental camp in Warchester left
a broad gap in the lines of the social life of Acredale. Jack's going
alone, to say nothing of the others, would have eclipsed the gayety of
many home groups besides his own, in which the Sprague primacy in a
social sense was acknowledged. Since the influx of the new-made rich,
under the stimulus of the war and Acredale's advantages as a resort,
there were a good many who disputed the Sprague leadership--tacitly
conceded rather than asserted. Chief of the dissidents was Elisha Boone,
who, by virtue of longer tenure, vast wealth, and political precedence,
divided not unequally the homage paid the patrician family. Boone was
fond of speaking of himself as a "self-made man," and the satirical were
not slow to add that he had no other worship than his "creator." This
was a gibe made rather for the antithesis than its accuracy, for even
Boone's enemies owned that he was a good neighbor, and, where his
prejudices were not in question, a man with few distinctly repellent
traits. He delighted in showing his affluence--not always in good taste.
He filled his fine house with bizarre crowds, and made no stint to his
friends who needed his purse or his influence. He had in the early days
when he came to Acredale aspired to political leadership in the
Democratic party.

But Senator Sprague was too firmly enshrined in the loyalty of the
district to be overcome by the parvenu's manoeuvres or his money. His
ambition in time turned to rancor as he marked the patrician's
disdainful disregard of his (Boone's) efforts to supplant him. Hatred of
the Spragues became something like a passion in Boone. Sarcasms and
disparagement leveled at his social and political pretensions he
attributed to the Senator and his family. All sorts of slurs and gossip
were reported to him by busybodies, until it became a settled purpose
with Boone to make the Sprague family feel heavy heart-burnings for the
sum of the affronts he had endured. It was to them he attributed the
whispered gibes about his illiteracy; his shady business methods; the
awful story of his handiwork in the ruin of Richard Perley, the
spendthrift brother of the Misses Perley. Once, too, when he had so well
manipulated the district delegates that he was sure of nomination in the
convention, Senator Sprague had hurried home from Washington and
defeated him just as the prize was in his grasp. The Senator made a
speech to the delegates, in which he pointedly declared that it was men
of honor and brains, not men of money, that should be chosen to make
the laws.

"The time will come, Senator, that you'll be sorry for this hour's
work," Boone said, joining Sprague at the door as he was leaving
the hall.

"How's that?" the other asked, with just the shade of superciliousness
in the tone admired in the Senate for suavity. "I hope I am always sorry
when I do wrong, in speech or act; I teach my children to be."

"Well, if you think it right to run the party for a few lordly idlers
too proud to mix with the people--men who think they are better born and
better bred than the rest of us--I don't want to have anything more to
do with it. I will go elsewhere."

"That's your privilege, sir. The Whigs have plenty of room for self-made
men. Though I do think you are taking too personal a view of to-day's
contest, your defeat was purely a matter of duty. Moore, whom we have
chosen, was a poor Irish settler here before you came. He was promised
the nomination two years ago." With a lofty bow the Senator turned and
stalked in another direction as if he did not care for the other's
further company. Even this small and wholly unintended affront worked in
the poor, misjudging victim of morbid self-esteem, as a cinder in the
eye will torture and blind the sufferer to all the landscape. Boone
mingled no more with the Democrats. He threw himself with the fervor of
the convert into the radical wing of the Whigs, and was brought into
close relation with some of the most admired of the band of great men
who created the young Republican party. If Douglas, Dickinson, Cass, Van
Buren, Seymour, or any eminent Democrat passing through Warchester
stopped to break bread with their colleague Sprague in his Acredale
retreat, straightway the splendid Sumner, the Ciceronian Phillips, or
the Walpole-Seward, or some other of the shining galaxy of agitators,
whose light so shone before men that the whole land was presently
brought out of darkness, met at Boone's table to maintain the balance in
distinction.

It was Boone's liberal purse that paid the expenses of the memorable
campaign in the Warchester district, wherein the Democrats were first
shaken in their hold. It was his money that finally secured the seat in
Congress for Oswald, who was his tenant and debtor. It was therefore no
surprise when Oswald--who had been greatly aided in business affairs by
Senator Sprague--passed over the prior claims of his old patron's son,
and gave the cadetship to Wesley Boone, the son of his new liege. It was
looked upon as another step in the ladder of gratitude when Wesley
carried off the captaincy in the Acredale company, though everybody knew
that young Boone was not in any way so well fitted for the "straps" as
Jack. When one day an item appeared in the local paper to the effect
that President Lincoln had shown the "sagacity for which he was so well
known, in honoring our distinguished townsman, Elisha Boone, Esq., with
the appointment of ambassador to Russia," everybody thought the
statement only natural. There were many congratulations. But when,
having declined this splendid proffer, the authorities pressed the place
of "Assistant Secretary of the Treasury" upon their townsman, the whole
village awoke to the fact that all its greatness had not gone when
Senator Sprague was gathered to his fathers.

The event was potent as the cross Constantine saw, or dreamed he saw, in
the sky, in the conversion of party workers to the new Administration.
Everybody looked forward to an eminent future for the potent partisan
and millionaire, the first of that--now not uncommon--hierarchy that
replace the feudal barons in modern social forces. Had he listened to
the eager urging of Kate, his daughter and prime minister, Boone would
have accepted the foreign mission; but he stubbornly refused to listen
to her in this.

Kate Boone was like her father only in strong will, vehement purpose,
and a certain humorous independence that made her a great delight among
even the anti-Boone partisans in both Acredale and Warchester. Since the
death of her mother, Kate had been head of her father's household--an
imperious, capricious, kind-hearted tyrant, who ruled mostly by jokes
and persuasions of the gentler sort. It was her father's one lament that
Kate was not "the boy of the family, for she had more of the stuff that
makes the man in her little finger than Wes had in his whole body." She
kept him in a perpetual unrest of delight and dismay. She espoused none
of his piques or prejudices; she was as apt to bring people he disliked
to his dinner-table as those he liked. She was forever making him
forgive wrongs, or what he fancied to be wrongs, and causing him seem at
fault in all his squabbles, so that he was often heard to say, when
things went as he didn't want them:

"I don't know whether I am to blame or the other fellow until Kate hears
the story."

His illiteracy and lack of polish were the secret grief of the rich
man's life. Kate was quick in detecting this. Much of it she saw was due
to the shyness that unschooled men feel in the presence of college men,
or those who have been trained. On returning from her seminary life, the
young girl set about remedying the single break in her father's
perfections. She was far too clever to let him know her ambitious
purpose. With a patience almost maternal and an exquisite adroitness,
she interested him in her own reading, which was comprehensive, if not
very well ordered. But she won the main point. During the long winter
evenings her father found no pleasure like that Kate had always ready
for him in the cheery library. He was soon amazed at his keen interest
in the world of mind unrolled to his understanding; more than all, he
retained with the receptivity of a boy all that was read to him. Kate
made believe that she needed his help in reviewing her own studies, and
so carried him through all she had gone over in the seminary classes.
Boone began presently to see that education is not the result of mere
attendance in schools and the parroting of the classics in a few
semesters in college. Without suspecting it, his varied business
enterprises and his wide experience of men had grounded him as well in
the ordinary forms of knowledge as nine in ten college men attain.

"Education, after all, papa, is like a trade. A man may be able to
handle all the tools and not know their names. Now, you are a
well-informed man, but, because you didn't know logic, grammar,
scientific terms, and the like, you thought yourself ignorant."

In the new confidence in himself he was surprised at his own ability in
launching a subject in the presence of his eminent friends when
especially Kate was on hand to support the conversation. She got him not
only to buy fine pictures, as most rich men do, but she made him see
wherein their value lay, so that when artists and amateurs came to
admire his treasures, he could talk to them without gross solecisms.

"I'm not a liberal education to you, papa, as Steele said of the Duchess
of Devonshire. That implies too much, but I am an index. You can find
out what you need to know by keeping track of my ignorance."

Elisha Boone's domestic circle was a termagancy--as Kate often told his
guests--tempered by wit and good-humor. He was prouder of his daughter
than of his self-made rank or his revered million. In moments of
expansive good-nature he invited business or political associates to
"Acre Villa," as his place was called, to enjoy the surprise Kate's
graces wrought in the guests. But these were not always times of delight
to the doting parent. Kate was a shrewd judge of the amenities; and if
the personages who came, at the father's bidding, gave the least sign of
a not unnatural surprise to find a girl so well bred and self-contained
in the daughter of such a man as Boone, she became very frigid and left
the father to do the honors of the evening visit. No entreaty could move
her to reappear on the scene. In time, the prodigal papa was careful to
submit a list of the names of his proposed guests, as chamberlains give
royalty a descriptive list of those to be bidden to court.

Kate was on terms that, if not cordial, were not constrained, with the
Spragues. She had gone to the same seminary with Olympia, had danced
with Jack, and, in the cadetship affair, had plainly given her opinion
that her brother Wesley, having no taste or fitness for military life,
Jack, who had, should have the prize. But two motives entered into the
father's determination: one was to annoy and humiliate the Spragues; the
other, the sleepless craving of the parvenu to get for his son what had
not been his, in spite of all the adulation paid him--the conceded
equality of social condition. The army was then, as I believe it is
considered now, the surest sign of higher caste in a democracy. Wesley,
by the mere right to epaulets, would be of the acknowledged gentility.
Nobody could sneer at him; no doors could be opened grudgingly when he
called. He would, in virtue of his West Point insignia, be a knighted
member of the blood royal of the republic. Some of this mysterious
unction would distill itself into the unconsecrated ichor of the rest of
the family, and Kate, as well as himself, would be part of the patrician
caste. The daughter looked upon all this good-humoredly; she shared none
of her father's morbid delusions on the subject. She rallied the cadet a
good deal on his mission. When Wesley, after the June examinations,
which he passed by the narrowest squeeze--'twas said by outside
influence--came home to display his cadet buttons and his neat gray
uniform in Acredale, Kate bantered the complacent young
warrior jocosely.

"We shall all have to live up to your shoulder-straps and brass buttons
after this, Wesley," she cried, as the proud young dandy strutted over
the arabesques of the library, where the delighted papa marched him, the
better to survey the boy's splendor. "And think of the fate that awaits
you if, in the esteem of Acredale, you should turn out less than a
Napoleon."

"Be serious, Kate, and don't tease the boy. Wesley knows what's expected
of him; he has an opportunity to show what is in his stock. Thank God,
men in the North can now come to their own without going down on their
knees to the South!"

Wesley grinned. He was no match for his sister in the humorous bouts
waged over his head against his father's prejudices and cherished social
schemes. During the vacation she put a heavy penalty of raillery upon
his swelling pride and vanity, sarcasm that tried the paternal patience
as well as his own. Wesley, however, had a large fund of the philosophy
that comes from a high estimate of one's self. He was well favored in
looks and build, though somewhat effeminate, with his small hands and
carefully shod feet. He would have been called a "dude" had the word
been known in its present significance; as it was, he was regarded as a
coxcomb by the derisive group hostile to the father's social
pretensions. He was the first of the golden youth of his set to adopt
the then reviving mode of parting the hair on the middle of the head. In
the teeth of the village derision, he persisted in this with a tenacity
that Kate declared gave promise of a "Wellington." For many who had at
first adopted the foreign freak had been ridiculed out of it,
discouraged by the obstinate refusal of the generality to follow the
lead. In those sturdily primitive days the rich youth of the land had
not so universally gone abroad as they do now, and "the proper thing"
among the "well born" was not so distinctly laid down in the code of the
_elite_. The accent and manners that now mark "good form" seemed queer,
not to say _bouffe_, to even the first circles of home society, and the
first disciples of "Anglomania" had a very hard time polishing the raw
material. The home life of the Boones was something better and sincerer
than the impression made upon their neighbors by the father's invincible
push and high-handed ways. His daughter and son had been born to him in
middle age. They had the reverence for the parent marked in the conduct
of children who associate gray hairs with the venerable. With all her
strong sense and self-assertion, Kate was proud of the fact that she was
her father's daughter. It was a distinction to bear his name. His
solidity, his masterful will, his well-defined, if narrow, convictions,
were to her the sanctities one is apt to associate with lineage or
magistracy. Wesley, though less impressionable than his sister, shared
these secret devotions to the parent's parts, and bowed before his
father's behests, in the filial reverence of the sons of the patriarchs.
When Elisha Boone denounced the outbreak of John Brown at Harper's Ferry
as more criminal than Aaron Burr's treason, his children made his
prepossessions their own; when, three years later, the father proudly
eulogized the uprising he had so luridly condemned, his children saw no
tergiversation in the swift conversion. When to this full measure of lay
perfection the complexion of Levite godliness was superadded by election
to the deaconate in the Baptist Church, it will readily be seen that two
young people, in whom the hard worldliness of wealth and easy conditions
had not bred home agnosticism, were material for all the credulities of
parent worship. Kate, a year older than Wesley, soon encountered the
influences which gave the first shock to her faith and gradually
tinctured her sentiments with a clearer insight into her father's
character. Oddly enough, it was through the rival house this came.
Olympia, a sort of ablegate in the social hierarchy of the village, had
been thrown much with Kate, and was greatly amused with her point of
view in many of the snarls arising in a provincial society. The intimacy
had been begun in the New York school, where both had been in the same
classes, and, though the families saw nothing of each other, the girls
did. Kate was soon led to see that the Spragues had none of the
patrician pretension her father attributed to them. Jack, too, had made
much of her, and seemed to delight in her sharp retorts to the inanities
of would-be wits. The episode in Elisha Boone's life, that all his
success, wealth, and after exemplary conduct had not condoned in the
village mind, was his handiwork in the ruin of Richard Perley, I set
this down with something of the delight Carlyle expresses when in the
rubbish of history he found, among the shams called kings and nobles,
anything like a man.

It is worth the noting, this trait of Acredale, at a time when riches
and success are looked upon as condoning every breach of the decalogue.
Just how the intimacy between the two men came about was not known. It,
however, was known that when Boone first came to Acredale he had been
helped in his affairs by Dick Perley's lavish means. In a few years
Boone was the patron and Perley the client. As Boone grew rich Perley
grew poor, until finally all was gone. Then the fairest lands of the
Perley inheritance passed to Boone. It was the fireside history of the
whole Caribee Valley that the rich contractor had encouraged the ruined
gentleman in the excesses that ended the profligate's career; that the
two men had staked large sums at play in Bucephalo, and that inability
to meet his losses to Boone had caused Dick Perley's flight. He had been
seen by one of the village people a year or two before the war in
Richmond, and had been heard of in California later, but no word had
ever reached his family, not even when his wife died, two years after
his exile. There were those who said that Boone was in correspondence
with his victim, and it was known that drafts, made by Dick Perley, had
been paid by Boone at the bank in Warchester. Between Boone and the
Perley ladies, whose house was separated from "Acre Villa" by a wide
lawn and hedge, there had always been the tacit enmity that wrong on one
side and meek unreproach on the other breeds. The rancor that manifested
itself in Boone's treatment of the Misses Perley was not imitated by
them. They never alluded to their affluent neighbor, never suffered
gossip concerning the Boones in what Olympia humorously called the
"Orphic adytum," the "tabby-shop," as Wesley named the Perley parlors.
Young Dick, however, had none of the scruples that kept his aunts
silent. One dreadful day, when he had been nagged to fisticuffs with
Wesley, whose dudish dignity exacted a certain restraint with the
hot-headed youngster, Elisha Boone, behind the thick hedge, heard on the
highway outside his grounds this outrageous anathema:

"You're no more than a thief, Wes Boone; your father stole all he's got.
Some day I'll make him give it back, or send him to jail, where he ought
to be now."

Schoolboy though the railer was, Boone staggered against the hedge, the
words brought a dreadful flush and then a livid pallor to the miserable
parent's cheek. He dared not trust himself to speak then. Nor was the
antipathy the outbreak caused mitigated by the savage thrashing that
Wesley, throwing aside his dignity, proceeded to administer to the
unbridled accuser. After that, by the father's sternest command, neither
of his children was to return the courteous salutation the Perley ladies
had never ceased to bestow in meeting the Boones walking or in company.
Now, Dick was the kind of boy that those who know boy nature would call
adorable. To the Philistine, without humor or sympathy, I'm afraid he
was a very bad boy. He was until late in his teens painfully shy with
grown people and strangers; even under the eyes of his aunts and with
youths of his own age, diffident to awkwardness. He had the face of a
well-fed cherub and the gentle, dreamy, and wistful eye of a girl in
love. With his elders he had the halting, confused speech of a new boy
in a big school. But in the woods or on the playground he was the
merriest, most daring, and winningly obstreperous lad that ever filled
three maiden aunts with terror and delight.




CHAPTER V.

A NAPOLEONIC EPIGRAM.


For weeks the regiment expected every day the order to march. The guns
had been distributed and all their fascinating secrets mastered. In
evolution and manual the men regarded themselves as quite equal to the
regulars. The strict orders forbidding absence overnight were hardly
needed, as no one ventured far, fearing that the regiment would be
whirled away to Washington during the night. Had the men been older or
more experienced in war, the weeks of waiting would have been delightful
rather than dreary. The regiment was the object of universal interest in
the town. Base-ball and the alluring outdoor pastimes that now divert
the dawdlers of cities were unknown. Hence the camp-ground of the
Caribees was the matinee, ball-match, tennis, boating, all in one of the
idle afternoon world of Warchester. At parade and battalion drill the
scene was like the race-ground on gala days.

All the fine equipages of the town drew up in the roads and lanes
flanking the camp, where with leveled glasses the mothers, sisters, and
sweethearts watched the columns as they skirmished, formed squares, or
"passed the defile," quite sure that the rebels would fly in confusion
before such surprising manoeuvres. This daily audience stimulated such a
fierce rivalry among the companies that the men turned out at all hours
of the day to drill and practice in squads, rather than loiter about the
camp. One day great news aroused the camp: the Governor was to review
the regiment and send it to the front. All Warchester poured out to the
Holly Hills, and when at five o'clock the companies filed out on the
shining green there was such a cheer that the men felt repaid for the
tiresome wait of months. The civic commander-in-chief watched the
movements with affable scrutiny, surrounded by a profusely uniformed
staff, to whom he expressed the most politic approval. He was heard to
remark that no such soldiers had been seen on this continent since Scott
had marched to Lundy's Lane.

There was a throb of passionate joy in the ranks when this eulogium
reached the men, for the words were hardly spoken when they were known
in every company by that mysterious telegraphy which makes the human
body a conductor swift as an electric wire among large masses of men.
Nor were the words less relished that the eulogist was as ignorant of
military excellence as a Malay of the uses of a patent mower. The men,
it was easy to see, were much more efficient in movement than the
officers in handling them. Colonel Oswald had wasted weeks in the study
of the occult evolutions of the battalion; they were still a maddening
mystery to him that fatal day. For six weeks his dreams had been haunted
by airy battalions filing over impossible defiles. The commands he gave
that day would have thrown the companies into hopeless confusion had the
junior officers not boldly substituted the right ones for the colonel's
blunders. This, however, passed unnoted, for the crowds, and even the
men, were not the sharp critics they afterward became when mistakes by
an incompetent officer were saluted by shouts of ridicule, and the men
contemptuously disregarded them. When Colonel Oswald ordered them to
"present arms" from a "place rest" there was more perplexity than
merriment, and the admiring crowd saw nothing peculiar in one company
snatching up bayonets to present while others remained perfectly still.

Jack, to whom the manual was a very sacred thing, broke into fierce
ridicule of the commander, declaring that he was better fitted for
sutler than colonel. When the savage speech was reported to headquarters
that young fellow's prospects for the straps--never the best--were by no
means improved. The review brought bitter disappointment to the
regiment. The inspector-general, who was present, informed the colonel
that no more than a thousand men could be accepted in one body; that
five hundred of the Caribees would have to be divided among other troops
in the State. The order aroused wild excitement. Half the men looked
upon the edict as a scheme to give the politicians more places for their
feudatories. Indeed, though that was not the origin of the order, that
was the use made of it. Some of the junior officers, who disliked Oswald
and distrusted his capacity to command, drew out very willingly, and of
course carried many of their men with them.

But in the end the matter had to be decided by lot. Now this chance
threw Wesley Boone out, and there was great rejoicing in the Acredale
group, who hoped that this stroke of luck would make place for their
favorite, Jack Sprague. But, to everybody's astonishment, a day or two
after the event, Wesley resumed his place in Company K, and gave out
that it was by order of the Governor. Jack was urged by the major of the
regiment, who had gone with the five hundred, to cast his fortunes with
the new body, promising a speedy lieutenancy. But Jack would not desert
the Caribees. All of Company K, and many in the others, had enlisted on
his word, and he could not in honor leave them. The opposition journals
had from the first denounced the division of the Caribees as a trick of
the partisans, and, sure enough, the men were given to understand that
there would be no move to Washington until after the election, then
pending. This was a municipal contest, and the Administration party made
good use of the incipient soldiery to obtain a majority in the town.

Promotion was quite openly held out as a reward for those who could
influence most votes for the Administration candidates. At night the
various companies were sent into the city to take part in the political
propaganda; to march in processions or occupy conspicuous places at the
party meetings. The private soldiers were almost to a man Democrats, but
the chance to escape the long and irksome evenings of the camp and join
the frolic and adventure of the street made most of them willing enough
to play the part of claque or figurantes. Jack, of course, refused to
take part in these scenic rallies, making known his sentiments in
vehement disdain. He detested Oswald, who had quit his party, not on a
question of principle, but merely for place, and Jack did not spare him
in his satirical allusions to the new uses invented for the military.

A still more trying injustice befell the luckless Jack. For a long time
he had, as senior, acted as orderly sergeant of Company K. This officer
is virtually the executive functionary in the company. It is his place
to form the men in rank, make out details, and prepare everything for
the captain. The orderly sergeant is to the company what the adjutant is
to the regiment. He carries a musket and marches with the ranks, but in
responsibility is not inferior to an officer. One evening when it was
known that orders had come for the regiment to march, Jack, having
formed the company for parade, received a paper from the captain's
orderly to read. He opened it without suspicion, and, among other
changes in the corps, read, "Thomas Trask to be first sergeant of
Company K, and he will be obeyed and respected accordingly." Jack read
the monstrous wrong without a tremor. The men flung down their arms and
broke into a fierce clamor of rage and grief. Many of them were Jack's
classmates. These swarmed about him. One, assuming the part of
spokesman, cried out:

"It's an infamous outrage. They cheated you out of your captaincy; they
have put every slight they could upon you. But we have some rights. We
won't stand this. There are thirty of your classmates who will do
whatever you say to show these people that they can't act like this."

There were mutiny and desperation in the air. It needed but a spark to
destroy the usefulness of the company. But, as is often the case with
impetuous, hot-headed spirits, Jack cooled as his friends grew hot. He
was the more patient that the injustice was his injury alone. He
remained in his place at the right of the company, and confronted the
rebellious group with amazing self-control. Then loud above the
murmuring his voice rang out:

"Company, attention! fall in, fall in! Any man out of the ranks will be
sent to the guard-house. Eight dress, steady on the left."

Many a time afterward these angry mutineers heard that sonorous, clear,
boyish treble in stern and determined command; but they never heard it
signalize a more heroic temper than at that moment, when, himself deeply
wronged, he forced them to go back in the ranks to receive the
interloper. They "dressed up" sullenly as Jack called the roll for the
last time, and received Trask, the new orderly, at a "present," which,
though not in the tactics, Jack exacted as a penitence for the momentary
revolt. Poor Trask looked very unhappy indeed as his displaced rival
stepped back to the rear and left the new orderly to march the company
out from the narrow way to take its place in the parade. It was easy to
see that he would have been very glad to postpone or evade his new
honors, on any pretext, for the time. He was so confused that Jack, from
the flank, was obliged to repeat the few commands needed to get the
company to the field.

Fortunately for the efficiency of the raw army, as this public
discontent reached its most acute stage orders came to march the troops
to Washington. The Caribees were the first body of soldiers sent from
Warchester, and there was a memorable scene when the jaunty ranks filed
through the streets to the station. By the time the men reached the
train they discovered that they could never make war laden down as they
were by knapsacks filled with the preposterous impedimenta feminine
foresight had provided.

The men's backs bulged out with such a pack of supplies that when the
regiment halted each man was forced to kneel and let a comrade take off
or put on his knapsack. And then the march through the streets--every
man known to scores in the throng! The brisk, high-stepping drum corps
rat-a-tatting at intervals; then tempests of cheers, flashing banners
and patriotic symbols at every window; tears, laughter, humorous cries,
jokes, sobbing outbreaks. The whole city was in march as the Caribees
reached the thronged main thoroughfare. Ready hands relieved the
soldiers of their burden as the line filed in sight of the Governor, who
had come to speed the parting braves.

Lads and lasses made merry with the elated warriors. The muskets were
turned into bouquet-holders, and the first move toward real war took on
the air of a floral _fete_. There were popping corks and sounds of
convivial revelry that made the scene anything but warlike. Jack, in a
cluster of his town cronies, caught sight of his mother at one of the
windows of the Parthenon Hotel. He wafted her a joyous kiss, pretending
not to see the tears falling down her cheeks. Olympia was not apparently
very deeply affected. She made her way through the crowd to her
brother's side, and with an air of the liveliest interest demanded:

"Jack, what have you in your knapsack? Let me see."

"O Polly, it's such a job to close it! What do you want? It is harder to
manage than a Saratoga trunk. I can't really stuff another pin or needle
in, so pray keep what you have for my furlough."

"No, I am not going to put anything in." She bent over while Barney
Moore, one of Jack's Acredale comrades, gallantly loosed the straps. She
searched carefully through the divers articles, taking everything out,
Jack looking on ruefully while his companions gathered about in vague
curiosity. When she had removed and restored everything she arose,
saying: "I feel easier now. I merely looked to see if that marshal's
_baton_ I have heard so much about was there. I shall feel easy in my
mind now, because a _baton_ in your baggage would have made you too
adventurous."

There was a great shout of laughter as the fun of the incident flashed
upon the listeners, many of whom had heard the ingenuous Jack often in
other days sighing for war, and the chance that Napoleon said every man
had of finding a marshal's _baton_ in his knapsack. Jack bore the banter
very equably, knowing that Olympia was rather striving to keep his
spirits up and divert him from the tears in his mother's eyes than
indulge her own humor. Indeed, most of the gayety at this moment was
contributed by those whose hearts were heaviest. The consecrated
priesthood of patriotism must see no weakness in those left behind. The
only son, now brought face to face with the meaning and consequence of
his rashly seized chance for glory, must not be reminded that perhaps a
grave lay beyond the thin veil of the near future; must not be reminded
that heavy hearts and dim eyes were left behind, feeding day by day,
hour by hour, on terror and dread, unsupported by the changing scenes,
the wild excitement, and the joyous vicissitudes of the soldier's life,
it was a cruel comedy acted every day between 1861 and 1865. They
laughed who were not gay, and they seemed indifferent who were fainting
with despair. The courage of battle is mere brutish insensibility
compared with the abnegation of the million mothers who gave their boys
to the bestial maw of war.

The harrowing ceremonial of parting is ended. The train moves slowly out
of the station, and a murmur of sobs and cheers echoes until it is far
beyond the easternmost limits of the city. After a journey of two days
and a night the train readied Philadelphia. Jack was all eyes and ears
for the spectacle the country presented. In every station through which
the regiment passed crowds welcomed the blue-coats. Women fed them, or
those who seemed in need, thinking, perhaps, of their own distant
darlings receiving like tenderness from the stranger.

In Philadelphia, the regiment marched across the city to resume its
journey. It was a cold spring night, and the regimental quartermaster
and commissary had made no provision for the men. Indeed, as the
observant Jack afterward learned, it was part of the plan of the groups
that first began to create great fortunes during the war to make the
soldiers pay for their rations _en route_ to the seat of war, or depend
upon the charity of citizens along the railway lines. The Government
paid for the supplies just the same, while the money went into the
pockets of contractors and quartermasters. After a weary tramp through
what seemed to the soldiers the biggest city in the world, the regiment,
with blistered feet, hungry and cross, were halted before a long, low
wooden building, through whose rough glass windows cheerful lights could
be seen. A rumor spread that they were to have a hot supper, and, sure
enough, they were marched in, dividing on each side of four long tables
that stretched into spectral distance, in the feeble glimmer of the
oil-lamps hanging from the ceiling. Most of the men in Jack's company,
at least, were gently nurtured, but the steaming oysters, cold beef, and
generous "chunks" of bread, filled their eyes with a magnificence and
their stomachs with a gentle repletion no banquet before or after ever
equaled. The feast was set in the same place during four years, by the
Sanitary Society, I think, but the memory of that homely board,
plenteously spread, is in the mind of many a veteran who faced warward
during the conflict.




CHAPTER VI.

ON THE POTOMAC.


The next morning, when the men debarked to march through Baltimore,
every one was on the _qui vive_ to fasten in his memory the scene of the
shameful attack upon the soldiers of Massachusetts on the 19th of April.
But, as the line marched proudly down Pratt Street, there were no signs
of the hostile spirit that made Baltimore a center of doubt and
suspicion in the North for many a day afterward. It was, however, when
the train dashed out from among the hills to the northwest of the sheet
of water behind the capitol that the Caribees glued their eyes to the
panes in awe not unmingled with delight. No American will ever look upon
that imperial dome again with the sensations that filled the breasts of
those who first saw its rounded outlines in the war epoch. What the ark
of the covenant was to the armies that marched in the wilderness, or the
cross of St. Peter to the pilgrims approaching Rome, that the great
dome, towering cloud ward in the perpetual blue, was to the wondering
eye of the soldier as his glance first fell upon it; that it was for
months--yes, ever after--on the plains of Arlington and in the deadly
exhalations of the Chickahominy. Every one looked anxiously to see signs
of war--indeed, since leaving Baltimore, there was a delicious feeling
of suspense--as the train shot over embankments or skirted the deep pine
woods. Perhaps an adventurous rebel vanguard might attack them. Perhaps
they might have the glory of fighting their way to the beleaguered
capital. Perhaps Father Abraham might come out and smile benignantly at
them for a brave deed well done. Faces flushed and eyes sparkled in the
delightful anticipation: and some of the ardent spirits, more eager than
the others, loaded their muskets to be ready! But, beyond the Federal
picket-post at the stations, no sign of war was soon, nor much sign of
hostilities, such as the vivid fancies of the raw young
warriors conjured.

But now the train was at rest, and the officers--who had not been seen
during the journey--turned out in resplendent plumery. The station--in
those days a tumble-down barrack--was already crowded with soldiery. The
Caribees were aligned along the track, the officers so bewildered by the
confusion that it was by a miracle some of the groups of moving men were
not run over by the backing engines. After an interminable delay, the
band set up "We're coming down to Washington to fight for Abraham's
daughter!" and with exuberant joy a thousand pairs of legs kept brisk
step and elastic movement to the inspiriting strain. Now the longing
eyes see the circumstance and even some of the pomp of war. The regiment
debouches into Pennsylvania Avenue, under the very shadow of the
Capitol, which looks sadly shabby and disproportioned to the eyes that
had an hour or two before opened in such admiration at the first view.
But there is no time for architectural criticism. They are moving down
the avenue toward the White House, toward the home of that patient,
kindly, sorely-tried ruler--the Democritus of his grisly epoch. The
Caribees excite none of the sensation here they have been accustomed to.
The streets are not crowded, and the few civilians passing hardly turn
their heads. Mounted orderlies dash hurriedly, with hideous clatter of
sabre and equipments, across the line of march, through the very
regiment's ranks, answering with a disdainful oath or mocking gibe when
an outraged shoulder-strap raised a remonstrating voice. At Fourteenth
Street the Caribees were halted until the colonel could take his
bearings from headquarters, just around the corner. The wide sidewalks
were dense with bestarred and epauleted personages in various keys of
discussion. Jack and his crony, Barney Moore, studied the scene in
wonder. Their company was halted exactly at the corner of Fourteenth
Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and the two were standing at
Willard's corner.

"I wonder if the President just stands and throws the stars down from
that balcony?" Jack said, as the crowd of brigadiers thickened before
the hotel door. "What on earth are they all doing here?"

"Oh, they come to make requisition on General Bacchus; he's the
commissary-general of the brigadiers--don't you know?" Barney said,
innocently.

"General Bacchus? Barney, you're crazy--there's no such officer in the
army--I know all the names--you mean General Banks, don't you?"

"Oh, no, I'm not mistaken--General Bacchus has been selected to deal out
the _esprit de corps!_"

"_L'esprit de corps_? Barney, you're certainly tipsy. I'm ashamed of
you!"

"Yes, the spirit of that corps, as you can tell from the whiffs that
come this way, is the whisky-bottle. Bacchus presides over that spirit.
One would think you'd never read an eclogue of Virgil--you're duller
than a doctor of divinity's after-dinner speech! A tutor's joke is the
utmost wit you ought to bear."

"And so you call that a joke?"

"Well, it isn't a cough, a song, an oath, or--or anything old Oswald
would say, so it must be a joke."

"Well, in that sense it may pass, like a tipsy soldier without the
countersign."

"Oh, come now, Jack, these stars are really dazzling you!"

"Not but I'll make you see some that will dazzle you, if you don't treat
your superior more respectfully."

"Oh, the punch you think of giving me wouldn't solve this star problem;
it requires to be made in the old--the milky way."

But Barney's astral jokes were brought to a period by the sharp note of
the bugle, as Colonel Oswald, very important under the eye of so many
big-wigs, magnificently ordered the march. The regiment passed up the
steep hill, out Fourteenth Street--then a red clay thoroughfare of
sticky mire with only here and there a negro's shanty where the palaces
of the rich rise to-day. The men learned something of their future
enemy, Virginia mud, as they climbed the red gorge and debouched on
Meridian Hill, where, presently, an aide-de-camp marked the ground
assigned the regiment, and the real life of the soldier began. How tame
to tell, but how "imperial the hour" when these one thousand lads first
went, on guard! Yes, the fact was now before them. They were no longer
segregated atoms, inert, ineffective, eccentric. They were part of that
mighty bulwark of blood and iron that stood between law and rebellion,
between the nation's heart and the assassin dagger of disunion.

How proud and glad and manly they felt, these bright-eyed boys--for boys
they mostly were; not a hundred in the regiment had seen their
five-and-twentieth year. One razor would have been ample for the beards
of the whole battalion. And oh, the nameless, the intoxicating sense of
solidarity as they swept the vast reach of hillsides, and saw the white
tents in brooding immensity on either hand! Yes, yonder, far across the
wondrous belt of water, touching loyalty and rebellion in its mighty
rush seaward, they could distinguish the cities of canvas on the distant
Virginia shore.

"It makes a fellow feel as Godfrey's hosts felt when they came in sight
of the Bosporus, and the hordes of the Saracens on the plains of the
Hellespont," Jack said, exultingly, as Barney stood on a pile of camp
equipages above him, surveying the quickening spectacle.

"I don't know how Godfrey's fellows felt, Jack, but it _do_ make a man
feel kinder able to do something with so many near by to lend a hand.
But, stars and garters! what a head it must take to manage all these!
Fair and square, now, Jack, you feel the fires of military genius in
your big head--do you think that you could disentangle this enormous
coil--put each corps, division, and regiment, in its proper place--at a
day's notice?"

"Oh, I couldn't perhaps do it just to-day; but give me time!"

"Yes, I'll give you to the age of Methuselah, and then if you can manage
it I shall not lose faith in you."

"Come, men, the tents must be up before dark. Sergeant Sprague, your
squad has five tents for its detail. You'll find axes and tools at the
quartermaster's wagon on the hill yonder!" It was the captain who spoke,
and, an instant later, the plot of ground, perhaps an acre and a half in
area, was a scene of rollicking labor. Each company had a street, the
tents--calculated to hold four each, but the number varied, going up
often as high as six--faced each other, leaving room enough for the
company to march in column or in line between the white walls. As the
regiment would be presumably some time on the ground, the canvas tents
rested on the top of a palisade of logs cut in the neighboring woods.
These were five feet or more in length, and when driven into the ground
a foot, and banked by the sticky clay, served excellently as walls upon
which to rest the A tents. Two berths, sometimes four, were fastened
laterally on these walls, frames running up to the center of the A held
the guns, while lines stretched across from above served as wardrobes
for such garments as could be hung up.

All this manoeuvring for space in such close quarters was great fun for
lads accustomed to roomy houses, and careless, almost to slovenliness,
in the matter of keeping things in place. Absurd as these details may
seem, they were all parts, and very important parts, in the life and
training of that mighty host that carried the destiny of the country in
its discipline during four years. There was rigid inspection of quarters
every Sunday morning, and during the week the non-commissioned officers
were expected to see that cleanliness was not intermitted. The company
"street" was "policed" every morning after breakfast, swept and
garnished, that is, with the care of a Dutch housewife. Order is the
first law of the soldier as well as of Heaven, and many a careless lad
brought from his four years' drill method and painstaking that made him
of more value to himself and his neighbors.

Personal traits, too, could be divined in these toy-like interiors. The
regulations prescribed the arrangement of the "bunks," blankets folded,
knapsacks laid at the head of the bed, accoutrements burnished until, at
first sight, the four guns in the rack seemed to be a mirror for the
orderly spirit of this thrifty grot. The shining plates, cups, and
spoons, would have done no discredit to the most energetic, housewife,
as they hung from pegs either above the bunks or along the wall. If
running water were not accessible, every tent had a tin basin for the
morning ablution, each soldier taking turn good humoredly. The household
duties were scrupulously observed, each man assuming his _role_ in the
complicated _menage_.

It was fully a week before the Caribees were installed ready for Sunday
inspection, as no exigency was permitted to interfere with morning and
afternoon drill, guard-mount, and parade. Battalion and brigade drill,
too, were new diversions for the Caribees, as now, camped near other
troops, these more complicated movements were part of the regiment's
allotted duty. After they were sufficiently trained in this they were to
take part in a grand review by the general-in-chief, when the President,
the Secretary of War, and all the great folks in Washington rode out to
witness the spectacle.

There was no time for dullness. Every hour had its duty, and these soon
became second nature to the zealous young warriors. Such rivalry to best
master the manual, to hold the most soldierly stature in the ranks, to
detect the drill-sergeant when, to test their attention, he gave a false
command! And then the coronal joy of a reward of merit for efficiency
and alertness on guard! The rapture the bit of paper brought, and the
exultation with which the hero thus signalized went off to town for the
day, wandered through the waste of streets, stood before Willard's and
admired in awe and wonder the indolent groups from whose shoulders
gleamed one and sometimes two stars! One day Jack and Barney, walking in
Fifteenth Street, saw a stout man, with no insignia to indicate rank or
station, coming out of the headquarters hurriedly. He walked to the edge
of the pavement, and, looking up and down, seemed disconcerted. Noticing
the two lads, he came to where Jack was standing in a preoccupied way,
and the two saluted decorously. He returned the salute and asked:

"Sergeant, are you on duty?"

"No, sir; I'm on leave for the day."

"Ah, good; my orderly was here a moment ago, but I don't see him
anywhere. Would you mind taking this telegram to the War Department,
through the park yonder?"

He gave Jack an envelope and hurried back into the building as the two
lads started with alacrity across the street.

"I've seen that chap before, somewhere," Barney said, panting with the
rapid pace.

"He's a staff officer, I suppose, not very high rank, for he only had a
blouse on. General officers always wear double-button frocks even if
they don't carry the insignia."

The War Department was easy of access, an old building not unlike Jack's
own home in Acredale. He asked the sentry at the door where his envelope
was to be delivered. The man looked at it, pointed to a closed door, and
Jack, receiving no response to his knock, entered. Three men were in the
room. One was seated at a vast desk with papers, maps, dispatches, and
books piled in disheartening confusion, within reach of his hand. Behind
him a young captain in uniform sat writing. But the figure that fixed
Jack's reverential attention was half sprawling, half lying over the
heaped-up impediments of the big desk. The young soldier caught sight of
the serious, sad face, the wistful humorous eyes, and he knew, with a
thrill through all his body and an adoring throb in his breast, that it
was the President--hapless heritor of generations of disjointed time.
All thought of his errand, all thought of place and person, faded as he
realized this presence. How long he would have remained in this mute
adoration there is no telling. The restless, keen eyes looked up sharply
and a dissonant, imperious, repellent voice jerked out:

"Well, my man, what is it?"

Without a word Jack handed him the envelope, and with a sort of
reverence to the tall figure whose face was turned kindly toward him he
backed to the door.

"O Barney, I've seen the President!"

"Seen the President! No? Oh! Why could not I have gone in with you? It's
always my luck."

"No: it was my luck. But take heart. He will come out pretty soon, and
we'll loaf about here. Perhaps we can see him as he goes back to the
White House yonder."

But though they waited far into the afternoon, forgetting their dinner
in the impulse of homage, they did not catch sight of the well-known
figure, for the President's way to the Secretary's room was a private
one, and when he went away the boys of course could not see him. But
Jack's good fortune was the talk of the regiment for many a day, and for
months when the fellows of the Caribee got leave they lingered
expectantly about the modest headquarters, hoping that a missing orderly
might bring them Jack Sprague's proud distinction of seeing the
President face to face. On the grand review, a few days later, Jack and
his crony were reminded of the encounter at headquarters, for the man
who had given the envelope to carry to the war office was riding a
splendid horse next to the President. Two stars glittered on his
shoulder now, and as he answered the cheers that saluted the group, the
young men saw that it was General McDowell, the commander of the forces.
The President rode along the lines, with a kindly wistfulness in the
honest eyes that studied with no superficial glance the long line of
shouting soldiery. He was not an imposing figure in the sense of
cavalier bravery, but no man that watched as he moved in the glittering
group, conspicuous by his somber black and high hat, ever forgot the
melancholy, rapt regard he gave the ranks, as at an easy canter he
passed the fronts of the squares or sat solemnly at the march past that
concluded the review.




CHAPTER VII.

THE STEP THAT COSTS.


What between the doings of the camp and the daily visit to Washington,
"soldiering" grew into an enchanting existence for the young warriors of
the Caribee. Their quarters were on the high plateaus north and west of
the city--which were in those days shaded slopes, that made suburban
Washington a vale of Tempe. In the streets they saw bedizened officers,
from commanders of armies down to presidential orderlies. In the Senate
and House they heard the voices of men afterward potent in
public councils.

What an exuberant, vagrant life it was! The blood warms and the nerves
tingle after the tensions and heats of a quarter of a century as those
days of sublime vagabondage come back. The melodious morning calls that
waked the sleepy, lusty young bodies; the echoing bugle and the abrupt
drum! And then the roll-call, in the misty morning when the sun, blear
and very red, rose as if blushing, or apoplectic after the night's
carouse! It was an army of poets--of Homers--that began the never
monotonous routine of these memorable days, for the incense of national
sympathy came faint but intoxicating to the soldier's nostrils in the
visits of great statesmen, the picnics of civilians, the copious
descriptive letters of correspondents and the daily scrawls from
far-away valleys, where fond eyes watched the sun rise, noted the stars,
to mark the special duties their darlings were doing in the watches of
the night. And then the mad music of cheers when the news came that the
young McClellan in West Virginia had scattered the adventurous columns
of Lee, capturing guns, men, and arms, and forever saving the great
Kanawha country to the Union! And in Kentucky the rebels had been
outmanoeuvred; while in Missouri the glorious Lyon and the crafty Blair
had, one in the Cabinet, the other in the camp, routed the secret,
black, and Janus-like rabble of treason and anarchy.

To feel that he was part of all this; that, at rest in the iron ring
girdling the capital, he was might in leash; that to-morrow he would be
vengeance let loose--this was the sustaining, exulting thought that made
the volunteer the best of soldiers. His heart was all in the glorious
ardor for action. Night and morning he looked proudly at the sacred
ensign waving lightly in the summer breeze, and he remembered that the
eyes of Washington had rested on the same standard at Valley Forge; that
the sullen battalions of Cornwallis had saluted it at Yorktown.

It was a beautiful ardor that filled the young hosts that waited in
leash on the green hills of the Potomac those months of turmoil, when
Scott and McDowell were straining the crude machinery of war to get
ready for the vital lunge. Jack and his Acredale squad, as the college
fellows were called, lived in a perpetual dream, from which the hard
realities of drill, now six hours a day, could not waken them. In days
of release they scoured the Maryland hills, secretly hoping that an
adventurous rebel picket might appear and give them occasion to return
to camp decked with preluding laurels. Mile after mile of the charming
woodland country they scoured, their hearts beating at the appearance of
any animate thing that for a brief, intoxicating moment they could
conjure into a rebel advance post. But, beyond wan and reticent yokels,
engaged in the primitive husbandry of this slave section, they never
encountered any one that could be counted overt enemies of the cause.
Money was plenty among these excursive groups, and they were welcomed in
Company K with effusive outbreaks by their less restive comrades.

As July wore on, the signs of movement grew. Regiments were moved away
mysteriously, and soon the Caribees were almost alone on Meridian Hill.
Jack was filled with dire fears that the commanding officer, having
discovered the incompetency of Oswald, feared to take the Caribees to
the front. Something of the rumor spread through the regiment, and if,
as reputed, "Old Sauerkraut" (this was the name he got behind his back)
had spies in all the companies, the adage about listeners was abundantly
confirmed. In the secrecy of Jack's tent, however, the subject was
freely discussed. Nick Marsh, the poet of the class, as became the
mystic tendencies of his tribe, was for poisoning the detested
Pomeranian--Oswald was a compatriot of Bismarck, often boasting, as the
then slowly emerging statesman became more widely known, that he lived
in his near neighborhood. Marsh's suggestion fell upon fruitful
perceptions. Bernard Moore--Barney, for short--was to be a physician,
and had already passed an apprenticeship in a pharmacy, coincident with
his college term in Jack's class.

"By the powers of mud and blood, Nick, dear, I have it!"

"Have what, Barney, me b'y?" Nick asked, mimicking Barney's quaintly
displaced vowels.

"Why, the way to get rid of Old Schnapps and Blitzen--more power to
me!"

"All the power you want, if you'll only do that; and your voice will be
as sweet as 'the harp that once in Tara's halls--'"

"Never moind the harp--Sassenach--here's what we can do. Tim Hussey is
Oswald's orderly; he and I are good friends. I know a preparation that
will turn the sauerkraut and sausages, that Oswald eats so much of, into
degluted fire and brimstone, warranted to keep him on the broad of his
back for ten days or a fortnight. Will ye all swear secrecy?"

"We will! We will!"

"On what?"

"On the double crown on your head," Jack answered, solemnly, "which you
have often told us was considered a sign that an angel had touched
you--I'm sure nothing could be more solemn than that. It isn't every
fellow that can get an angel to touch the top of his head."

"No; most fellows can consider themselves lucky if an angel touches
their lips--or heart," Barney cried, naively.

"Well, never mind that sort of angel now, Barney," Nick said, pettishly;
"I notice that you always bring up with something about the girls, no
matter what the subject we set off on. It's the jalap--isn't that what
it's called?--we want to hear about."

"There isn't enough poetry or sentiment in the two o' ye to fill a
wind-blown buttercup. No wonder ye don't care to talk of the
gurls--they'll have none of ye."

"We'll be satisfied if they'll have you, Barney. I'm sure that's
magnanimous. But if your jalap takes as much time in working Old
Schnapps as you take in explaining it, the war will be over, and we
shall have seen none of it."

"It's too great a conception to be hastily set forth. Give me time. I'll
lay a guinea that Oswald goes to the hospital before this day week. Let
us see. This is the 14th; before the 20th--" and Barney gave the barrel
of his gun, near him, a furtive wipe with his coat-sleeve.

"Barney, if you'll do that, I'll gather every four-leaved clover between
here and Richmond to give you; and, what's more, if I die I'll leave you
my bones to operate."

"Ah, Nick, dear, I'd rather have your little finger living than all the
possessions of your father's bank. If you were dead--" And honest Barney
seized the poet's hand sentimentally.

"Come, come, fellows, what sort of soldiering do you call this? You
remind me of two school-girls," Jack remonstrated, as in duty bound to
keep up the warrior spirit.

"Yer acquaintances among females being chiefly of the silly sort, it's
no wonder we remind you of the only things you can look back on without
blushing," Barney retorted; and a neighbor poking his head in the door
to learn the cause of the hilarity, the conspirators sallied out for a
jaunt until parade-time. Now, what means Barney employed, or whether he
had any handiwork in what befell, it does not fall to me to say, but
this is what happened: A market hawker came into camp the next morning
and went straight to the big marquee tent where Colonel Oswald stood, in
all the bravery of a new broadcloth uniform with spreading eagles on the
shoulders. The savory fumes of hot sauerkraut aroused the warrior from
his reveries, and he asked, in vociferous delight:

_"Was haben sie? Kohlen, nicht wahr--sauerkraut--das is aber schon?"_

"Yes, mein golonel, I hof cabbage und sauerkraut und"--looking about
circumspectly--"_etwas schnapps aus Antwerpen gebracht?"_

The "golonel's" eyes glistened and he made a motion for the vender to go
to the rear of the marquee. Passing through from the front, he met him
at the rear, and the bargain was hastily concluded, Marsh secreting
three portly bottles in his chest, and turning the edibles over to
Hussey to store in the larder. There had been a good deal of uneasiness
in camp over rumors of cholera, yellow fever, and other dismal
epidemics. When, therefore, the evening after the colonel's purchase the
regimental surgeon was summoned in alarm, it was instantly believed in
the regiment that "Old Sauerkraut" was stricken with cholera. He at
first suffered hideous pains in the stomachic regions. This was followed
by a raging thirst, and, unknown to the physician, the three bottles of
schnapps were quite emptied. On the fourth day the poor man, very
woe-begone, but now suffering no pain, was carried to the hospital, and
the next day, as the campaign was about to begin, he was sent North, to
leave room near the field for those who should be wounded in the coming
engagement.

Company K was drilling on the wide plateau between the camp and the
highway when the ambulance bearing the afflicted officer came slowly
over the road worn through the greensward. Hussey sat solemnly on the
seat with the driver, and as the vehicle reached the company, standing
at rest, Barney Moore in the rear rank spoke up:

"Tim, is the poor colonel no better?"

"Divil a betther; it's worse he's intirely. God be good till 'im!"

Neither Jack nor Nick Marsh dared trust himself to meet the other's eyes
as the helpless chief disappeared down the hillside, while Barney
entered into an exhaustive treatise on the symptoms of cholera and the
liability of the most robust to meet sudden disaster in this malarious
upland, circumvailated by ages of decaying matter in the damp swamps on
every hand. But when, an hour later, Company K's whole street was
aroused by peal on peal of Abderian laughter, Jack and Nick were found
helpless in their bunks, and Barney was engaged in presenting a potion
to settle their collapsed nerves!

"Well, haven't I won the guinea, now? It cost me just twice that. If
ye's have a spark of honor ye'll pay your just dues, so ye will," Barney
said, in the evening, returning from parade, where Lieutenant-Colonel
Grandison officiated as commander, to the unconcealed delight of all but
the Oswald parasites among the officers.

"Don't say a word, Barney--to whom the medicos of mythology and all the
wizards of antique story are clowns and mountebanks--you shall have the
guinea or its equivalent."

"Twenty-one shillings gold, bear in mind. Yer father's a banker, ye
ought to know that!"

"I do. You shall have the twenty-one shillings in the shinplasters of
the republic."

The colonel had been routed none too soon. The very next morning, when
the Caribees "fell in" for roll-call, the orderly received a paper from
the commander's orderly which read, "Tents to be struck at twelve
o'clock and the men ready to march, with ten days' rations."

At last! All the future, glowing with heroism, exciting with the march,
the attack, the battle--ah! what after? With something of joy and regret
the comely tents, that had given them home and harbor, were taken down,
folded in precise line, and carried away for storage--for in the field
the ranks were to bivouac in the open air. Such gayety; such jokes; such
bravado; and augury of the to be! And the rumors! Telephones, had they
been invented; stenographers, had they been present in legion, could not
have kept track of the momentous tales that were instantly bruited
about. General Scott was going to lead the army in person. His charger
had been seen before the headquarters. The rebels were going to be
swooped up by another such famous dash as the flank march from Vera Cruz
to the plateau of Mexico! Then came a numbing fear that Beauregard's
bragging host had fled, and that the movement would turn out a tedious
stern chase to Richmond. In the agony of all this Jack, returning from a
"detail" to the quartermaster's tent, heard his name shouted where his
tent had been. He hurried to the spot and Nick saluted him with
the cry--

"Here, Jack, are two recruits who declare they must enter Company K."

His gun was on his arm and his knapsack on his back, but only the
realization that a score of eyes were upon him saved Jack from dropping
limply on the ground, as, looking in the group, he saw Dick Perley and
Tom Twigg grinning ingratiatingly at him.

"Where--how in the name of all that's sacred did you get here?" he
gasped.

"Why, we enlisted for drummers in the Caribees, but the recruiting
officer told us as we were eighteen we could carry muskets if we wanted
to. We do want to, and we're going to come into Company K."

They looked him confidently in the face as Dick repeated this evidently
long-practiced explanation. It would not do to take them to task before
the company. Jack waited until the rest were scattered, and then,
leading the boys aside, said, sternly:

"Don't you know you can be put in prison for this? You have run away
from your parents and guardians. No one had a lawful right to enlist
you. I shall send for the provost marshal and have you put in prison
until your parents can come and get your enlistment annulled."

Appalled by Jack's stern manner as much as by his words, the two lads
began to whimper and expostulate tearfully. They had trusted to his
ancient friendship. They could have gone into any other regiment, but
they had enlisted to be with him. Whatever happened, they were soldiers,
and, if Tom Twigg wasn't eighteen until September, it was perfectly
lawful for him to enlist as a drummer. Perley was eighteen in April
last, and he was a soldier in spite of all that Jack could do. Jack was
deeply perplexed. What could be done? If he attempted to put the
machinery of reclamation in order, the boys would be subjected to all
sorts of vicissitudes, prisons, everything distressing and demoralizing
to tender youth.

"Do they know at home what you have done?" Jack asked, doubtingly.

"Yes," Dick said, noting with boyish quickness the indecision in Jack's
troubled face. "I sent a letter to Aunt Pliny, from New York, telling
her we were soldiers, and that we were happy and well."

"You impudent young scamp--to write that to your best friend! Don't you
know it will kill her?"

Dick had no answer for this, and looked perplexedly at Tom, who was lost
in admiration of a neighboring group engaged in athletic exercises. He
felt rather than heard the question put by the Mentor, and observing
Dick's discomfiture, stammered:

"It didn't kill your mother when you went for a soldier, I guess."

The astute young rascal had hit upon the weak place, and Jack stood in
anxious doubt wondering what to do. An aide that he recognized from
division headquarters rode past at the moment and Jack turned to watch
him. He leaped from his horse at the colonel's tent. Jack again looked
at the boys. They were lost in delight at the scene and oblivious of the
debate going on in their guardian's mind.

"Stay here till I come back," he said, authoritatively, and strode off
to Grandison's tent. As he reached it the major, McGoyle, was entering,
and Jack waited until that officer should come out. He came presently,
and Colonel Grandison with him. Jack saluted, and stated his dilemma to
the commander, who listened with amused interest.

"I don't see that anything can be done now, Jack. I'm just about leaving
the regiment. I have been assigned to General Tyler's staff during the
campaign. McGoyle takes command of the regiment. He will need orderlies,
and the boys can serve with him until we can get time to look into the
business. I will settle the matter with him, and if you will write a
telegram to the lad's family I will have it sent as I go to
headquarters."

Jack's relief and gratitude were best seen in the brightening eye and
the more buoyant movement that succeeded the heaviness and agitation of
his first impression. The boys' coming would weigh upon him every minute
until he was in some sort relieved of even passive complicity. He would
feel that the kind-hearted "Pearls," as the aunts were often called,
would look upon him as having led the truants into the army. But
Grandison's interposition had shifted from him a weighty anxiety. The
boys would not be left friendless and irresponsible in the turbulent
streets of Washington. Nor would they, as orderlies, be in continuous or
inextricable danger in battle--for whereas the soldier in the line must
keep in ranks even when not in actual battle, with the enemy's missiles
as destructive as in the charge or combat, the orderlies may take
advantage of the inequalities of ground and natural objects. Jack
explained something of this to the young Marlboroughs, and was fairly
irritated at the crest-fallen look that came into their eager, shining
faces when they comprehended that they were not to be with their hero.

"But you couldn't be in the company in any event. You look more like
rebels than soldiers, with your gray jackets and trousers"--for the boys
still wore their Acredale uniform, an imitation of the West Point
cadet's costume. "We shall be on the march in a few minutes, and there
is only one of two things to be done. Remain here in the 'unassigned'
camp, where you may be transferred into any regiment in the service that
needs recruits; or go, as Colonel Grandison has very kindly consented to
have you, as orderlies or clerks."

The very possibility of being sent into some unknown regiment was a
terror so great that the other alternative became less odious to the
boys, and they trotted after Jack, as he stalked moody and distracted to
Major Mike McGoyle's tent, now the only habitable spot left where a few
hours before a symmetrical little city had stood.

"And so ye want to be solgers, me foine b'yes? Well, well, 'tis litter
for yer mothers' knees ye are, with yer rosy cheeks and curling locks.
It's a poor place here for yer bright oies and soft hands, me lads; but
I'm not the wan to throw the dish after th' milk when it's spilt!"

He stroked the bared heads of the blushing lads, and, turning to their
unhappy sponsor, he added with official brevity: "I will put Twiggs's
son at me papers in the adjutant's office. Young Pearley can remain with
your company until I make out a detail for him."

It was impossible for Jack to sustain the _role_ of frowning displeasure
as Dick skipped back with him to the company. He remembered his own
delight three months before, even with the haunting thoughts of his
mother's reproaches to dampen his ardor, and he was soon dazzling the
neophyte with the wonders that were just about to begin.

It was the afternoon of the 16th of July, and the hillsides, which the
day before were covered with tents as far as the eye could see on every
hand, were now blue with masses of men, while other masses had been
passing on the red highways since early morning, taking the direction of
the Potomac bridges.




CHAPTER VIII.

AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.


It has always seemed to me that the life, the routine, the many small
haps in the daily function of a soldier, which in sum made up to him all
that there was in the _devoir_ of death, ought to be read with interest
by the millions whose kin were part of the civil war, as well as by
those who knew of it only as we know Napoleon's wars or Washington's.
For my part, I would find a livelier pleasure in the diary of a common
soldier, in any of the great wars, than I do in the confusing pamphlets,
bound in volumes called history. I like to read of war as our Uncle Toby
related it. I like to know what two observing eyes saw and the feelings
that sometimes made the timidest heroes--sometimes cravens.

For a month--yes, months--the burden of the press, the prayers of the
North, had been, "On to Richmond!" Jack, through Colonel Grandison, knew
that General McDowell and the commander-in-chief, the venerable soldier
Scott, had pleaded and protested against a move until the new levies
under the three-months' call could be drilled and disciplined. But on
the Fourth of July Congress had assembled, and the raw statesmen--with
an eye to future elections--took up the public clamor. They gave the
Cabinet, the President, no peace until General Scott and McDowell had
given way and promised the pending movement.

"Our soldiers are so green that I shall move with fear," McDowell said
to the President.

"Well, they" (meaning the rebels) "are green too, and one greenness will
offset the other," Lincoln responded with kindly malice. It was useless
to argue further; useless to point out that the rebels were not so
"green," for the young men of the semi-aristocratic society of the South
were trained to arms, whereas it was a mark of lawlessness and vulgarity
to carry arms in the Puritan ranks of the North. Something of the
unreadiness of the army, every reflecting soldier in the ranks
comprehended, when he saw within the precincts of his own brigades the
hap hazard conduct of the quartermaster's and staff departments. Some
regiments had raw flour dealt them for rations and no bake-ovens to turn
it into bread; some regiments had abundance of bread, but no coffee or
meat rations. As to vegetables--beans, or anything of the sort--if the
pockets of the soldiers had not been well supplied from home, the army
that set out for Manassas would have been eaten with scurvy and the skin
diseases that come from unseasoned food.

Now, at the very moment the legions were stripped for the march, many of
them were without proper ammunition. Various arms were in use, and the
same cartridge did not lit them all. Eager groups could be seen all
through the brigades filing down the leaden end of the cartridge to make
their weapons effective, until a proper supply could be obtained. This
was promised at Fairfax Station, or Centreville, where the army's
supplies were to be sent. So, in spite of the high hopes and feverish
unrest for the forward movement, there was a good deal of sober
foreboding among the men, who held to the American right to criticise as
the Briton maintains his right to grumble. For the soldier in camp or on
the march is as garrulous as a tea gossip, and no problem in war or
statecraft is too complex or sacred for him to attempt the solution. Of
the thirty thousand men leaving the banks of the Potomac that 16th of
July there were, at a low estimate, ten thousand who believed themselves
as fitted to command as the chieftains who led them.

By two o'clock the Caribees were in the line that had been passing
city-ward since daylight. The sun had baked the sticky clay into
brick-like hardness, and the hours of trampling, the tread of heavy
teams, and the still heavier artillery, had filled the air with an
opaque atmosphere of reddish powder, through which the masses passed in
almost spectral vagueness. The city crowds, usually alert, when great
masses of men moved, were discouraged by heat and dust, and the streets
were quite given over to the military. Eager as Jack and his friends
were to note the impression the march made upon the civilians, most of
whom were thought to be secretly in sympathy with the rebellion, it was
impossible to even catch sight of any but soldiers. Pennsylvania Avenue,
when they reached it, was a billowy channel of impalpable powder. But at
the Long Bridge the breeze from the wide channel of the river cleared
the clouds of dust, and the men, catching glimpses of each other, broke
into jocose banter. On the bridge they looked eagerly down the river,
where the low roofs of Alexandria were visible, and upward on the
Virginia shore where the gleaming walls of Arlington recalled to Jack
far different times and scenes.

"Now we're in Jeff Davis's land," Barney called out from one of the rear
files, as the company reached midway in the bridge.

"Not by a long shot," Nick Marsh cried. "Davis's land begins and ends
within cannon-shot of himself. He is like the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen--he
has to beg his neighbor's permission to hold battalion drill."

"He isn't so polite as the duke; he takes it without asking," Barney
retorts.

"But now we are on the 'sacred soil,'" Jack cries, as the company
debouched from the bridge up the steep, narrow road that seemed to be
taking them to Arlington. In spite of the burning heat and the
exhaustion of the three hours' march, the scene was, or rather the
imagination of the men, invested each step with a sort of awe. They were
at last in the enemy's territory. It had been held by the Union forces,
only by dint of large numbers and strong fortifications. There wasn't a
man in the company that didn't resent the fact, constantly obtruding
itself on the ranks as they marched eagerly onward by every knoll, every
bush in the landscape, that Union soldiers had been there before them!
that their devouring eyes were not the first to mark these
historic spots.

Tired as they were and burdensome as the heavy knapsacks and still
heavier ammunition had become, they heard an aide give the order to
bivouac with chagrin! They so longed to put undebatable ground behind
them and really be where the distant coppice might be a curtain to the
enemy! The Caribees marked with indignant surprise that, when they had
turned into a field about seven o'clock, the long line following them
pushed onward until far into the night, and they envied the contiguity
this would give the lucky laggards to first see and engage the enemy!
But they turned-to very merrily, in this first night of real soldiering.
They were "in the field." All the parade part of military life was now
relaxed. The hot little dress coats were left behind; there was no
display. Even guard-mount was reduced to the simplest possible form.

With one impulse all the men--that is, all who had been alert enough to
provide pen and paper--bestowed themselves about the candles allotted
each group, and began letters "home," dated magniloquently "Headquarters
in the Field. Tyler's Division, Sherman's Brigade, 16th July, 1861." The
imperial impulse manifested itself in these curt epistles. I can't
resist giving Jack's:

"Dear Mother: How I wish you and Polly could see us now! We are really
on the march at last. The battle can't be far off. We are not many miles
from the enemy, and, if he stands, what glorious news you will hear very
soon! I wish you could have seen us to-day. Colonel Sherman, who is the
sternest looking man I ever saw, a regular army officer, once a
professor, told the major--you know McGoyle is commanding us now--he is
a brick--Sherman told him that the Caribees did as good marching as the
regulars, who came behind us. Dear old Mick, with his brogue and his
blarney, has won every heart in the regiment, and you may be sure we
shall see the whites of the enemy's eyes under him, which we never
should have done under that odious Hessian, Oswald--in hospital now,
thank Heaven--though some time, when I tell you the story, you will see
that in this, as in most other things, Heaven helps those who help
themselves. Taps will sound in five minutes, and I can only add that I
am in good health, glorious spirits, and unshaken confidence that we
shall return to Acredale before your longing to see your son overcomes
your love of glory. We shall return victors, if not heroes--at least I
know that you and Polly will believe this of your affectionate and
dutiful son

"JACK."

Barney read one or two phrases of his composition to the indulgent ear
of Jack and the poet, over which they laughed a good deal. "We are," he
said, "before the enemy. I feel as our great ancestor, Baron Moore, felt
at Fontenoy when the Sassenachs were over against the French lines--as
if all the blood in Munster was in my veins and I wanted to spill it on
the villains ferninst us."

The poet declined to quote from his epistle, and the three friends sat
in the dim light until midnight, wondering over what the morrow had in
store. Dick Perley listened in awe to Jack's wonderful ratiocinations on
what was to come--secretly believing him much more learned in war than
this General McDowell who was commanding the army. The first bugle
sounded at three in the morning in the Caribees' camp, and when the
coffee had been hastily dispatched, the men began to understand the
cause of their being shunted into the field so early the evening before
while the rear of the column marched ahead of them. The Caribees passed
a mile or more of encampments, the men not yet aroused, and when at
daylight the whole body was in motion they were in advance, with nothing
before them but a few hundred cavalry.

A delirious expectation, a rapturous sense of holding the post of
danger, kept every sense in such a thrill of anticipation that the hours
passed like minutes. The dusty roads, the intolerable thirst, and the
nauseous, tepid water, the blistered feet, the abraded hips, where the
cartridge-box began to wear the flesh--all these woes of the march were
ignored in the one impulse to see the ground ahead, to note the first
sight of the enemy. It was not until four o'clock in the afternoon that
the column was halted, and two companies, K and H, were marched out of
the column and formed in platoons across the line of march, that the
regiment learned with mortification that hitherto the route had been
inside the Union lines! They soon saw the difference in the tactics of
the march. The company was spread out in groups of four; these again
were separated by a few yards, and in this order, sweeping like a
drag-net, they advanced over the dry fields, through the clustering
pines or into cultivated acres, and through great farm-yards.

Back of them the long column came, slowly winding over the sandy highway
which curved through the undulating land. Here and there the
skirmishers--for that was the office the two companies were now
filling--came upon signs of picket-posts; and once, as Jack hurried
beyond his group to the thicket, near a wretched cabin, a horse and
rider were visible tearing through the foliage of a winding lane. He
drew up his musket in prompt recognition of his duty, but he saw with
mortification that the horse and rider continued unharmed. Other shots
from the skirmish-line followed, but Jack's rebel was the only enemy
seen, when, in the early dusk, an orderly from the main column brought
the command to set pickets and bivouac for the night. Jack would have
written with better grounds for his solemnity if he had waited until
this evening; but now there was no chance.

The companies were the extreme advance of the army; nothing between them
and the enemy but detached pickets of cavalry, at long distances apart,
to fly back with the report of the least signs made by the rebels. These
meager groups were forbidden fires, or any evidence of their presence
that might guide hostile movement, and the infantry outposts felt that
they were really the guardians of the sleeping thousands a mile or so
behind them. No one minded the cold water and hard bread which for the
first time formed the company's fare that night. Like the cavalry, fire
was forbidden them. They formed little groups in the rear of the outer
line of pickets, discussing with animation--even levity--the likelihood
of an engagement the next day. It was the general opinion that if
Beauregard meant to fight he would have made a stand at some of the
excellent points of vantage that had been encountered in the day's
march. Jack smiled wisely over these amateur guesses, and quite abashed
the rest when he said:

"Beauregard is no fool. His army is massed near the point that he is
guarding--Manassas Junction. You seem to think that war is a game of
chance, armies fighting just where they happen to meet each other. Not
at all. Our business is to march to Richmond; Beauregard's business is
to prevent us. To do this he must, first of all, keep his lines of
supply safe. An army without that is like a ship at sea without
food--the more of a crew, the worse the situation. Of course, Beauregard
had his skirmishers spread out in front of us, but, as there is no use
in killing until some end is to be gained, they have got out of our way.
If the spies that are in our ranks should send information that promised
to give the rebels a chance to get at a big body of our men, before the
whole army came up, you'd see a change of things very quick. We've got
fifty thousand men, or thereabout" (Jack was wrong; there were but
thirty thousand). "Now, these men are stretched back of us to
Washington, fifteen miles or more, because the artillery must be
guarded, and infantry only can do that. Now, suppose Beauregard finds
that there is a gap somewhere between the forces stretching back, and he
happens to have ten or fifteen thousand men handy? Why, he just swoops
down upon us, and, if we can't defend ourselves until the rest of the
army comes up, he has won what is called a tactical victory, and
endangered our strategy."

"Goodness, Jack, you ought to have been commander-in-chief! You talk war
like a book!" Barney cried, in mock admiration.

The war-talk went on late into the night, for the company, detached from
camp, was not obliged to follow the signals of the bugles that came in
melodious echoes over the fragrant fields. It was a thrilling sight as
the lone watchers peered backward. The June fields for miles were dotted
with blazing spires, as if the earth had opened to pour out columns of
flame, guiding the wanderers on their trying way. The sleep of the night
was desultory and fitful, excitement stimulating everybody to
wakefulness.




CHAPTER IX.

"THE ASSYRIAN CAME DOWN LIKE THE WOLF ON THE FOLD."


The next morning the march was resumed by daylight, the two companies
remaining on the skirmish-line. The country gradually became more rugged
as the route brought them near Centreville. There were no hills--a bare
but not bleak champaign, mostly without houses or farms, as the North
knows them. Sluggish brooks became more frequent, but none that were not
easily fordable. There were no landmarks to hold the mind to the scene,
nor, in case of battle, give the strategists points of vantage for the
iron game. About noon, the detached groups stalking a little negligently
now over the tedious plains, were startled by the unexpected.

On the green slope of a hill, a mile or more ahead, a score of little
puffs of white smoke were seen, then a sharp report, and, in some places
near by, the ground was broken as if by a thrust of a spear, and little
scraps of clay scattered over the greensward. Then the bugle sounded a
halt. A few minutes later the horsemen spread in a chain across the line
of march, rode swiftly to a common center, formed in a solid group,
turned to the rear and rode back of the skirmishers to the main body.
Company K watched them as they galloped back, and as they reached the
group at the head of the long line, a half-mile or so distant, a body of
men hastened forward laden with stretchers and hospital appliances. Ah!
at last! It is now real war. The bugle sounds Forward! and with an
elastic spring the groups of four push dauntlessly ahead. Their eyes are
fixed on the brow of the hill, separated from them by a narrow
depression.

The whole line--perhaps three miles wide--but, of course, not at all
regular, conforming largely to the difficulties encountered, moves down
the sloping bank on a run. Before they reach the bottom they are an
excellent target, and for the first time that most blood curdling of
sounds--the half-singing, half-hissing z-z-z-ip of the minie-ball--numbs
the ardor of the bravest. It is such a malignant, direct, devilish
admonition of murder; it comes so unexpectedly, no matter how well you
are prepared, that Achilles himself would feel a spasm of fear. And when
it strikes it does its work with such a venomous, exultant splutter,
that there seems something animate, demoniac in it. The volley, as I
said, came as the men were hurried down the hill by their own momentum
and by the sharp fall in the ground. The balls passed too high or too
low, but they impressed the fact on enthusiasts, who had longed for
battle, that one might die for one's country and not die gloriously. It
seemed such an ignoble, such a dastardly, outrageous thing, that death
could come to them from unseen hands, for as yet they had not seen a
soul. But now they are at the foot of the hill--though it is not correct
to so call it, for it was a long, winding valley, through which ran a
dancing streamlet, very welcome to the thirsty warriors when they had
succeeded in breaking through the vicious natural _chevaux de frise_ of
blackberry-briers and nettles. But now there wasn't much time to slake
thirst. The bullets had begun to come regularly; and suddenly, as Jack
conducted his squad across the stream, he was startled by the
exclamation, uttered rather in reverence, it seemed to him, than
surprise or pain:

"My God, I'm hit!"

Yes, a fair-haired lad--one of his class--tottered a second in a limp,
helpless way, and fell headlong, pitching into the little stream. Jack
ran and lifted him out; but even before the hospital corps came the boy
was dead. The bullet had gone quite through his heart.

However, now the first numbing terror of the bullet was changed to a
sort of revengeful delight. Relinquishing any return fire for a moment,
the company, with a great shout, that sounded all along its front,
dashed up the hill, through the scrub-oak at the brow, and then they
could see the enemy slowly retiring, a chain of them a mile or more
wide. While one of the rebel ranks fired the other knelt, or lay flat
upon the ground loading, where there were no natural obstacles to take
shelter behind. A vengeful shout ran along the Union lines.

"Capture them--don't fire!" and with one impulse the groups lied forward
so swiftly that the enemy, believing the rush only momentary, delayed
too long, and in two minutes the Union line was pell-mell among them.

"Surrender!" Jack shouted to the squad just ahead of him--"surrender, or
we'll blow your heads off!" and along the line for some distance to his
left and right he could hear his own exultant demand echoed. There was
nothing to do for the rebels, who had neglected to keep their enemies at
the proper distance, but throw up their hands. Jack's squad sent back
twenty-three prisoners to Major Mike, who took them in proud triumph to
General Tyler, riding with the head of the column, now that the tenacity
of the rebel skirmishers made it seem probable that there would be
serious work. But though the firing kept up as the Union forces
advanced, no obstacle more, serious than the thin lines of the
skirmishers revealed itself.

At dusk the bugles, moving with the captains in the rear, sounded the
rally, and then the scattered groups came together in company. They were
to bivouac on the spot to await their regiment when it arrived.
Meanwhile, to the bitter discontent of the Caribee companies, their post
of honor was taken by new troops, and they knew that next day they would
march in line. They had so enjoyed the glory of the first volleys, the
first deaths, and the first prisoners, that, not remembering military
procedure, they resented the change as an aspersion upon their valor.

When the regiment came up, however, they forgot their mortification in
the eager questioning and envious jocularities of the rest. Companies K
and H were so beset that they forgot to boil their coffee, and would
have gone thirsty to their dewy beds, if the other companies' cooks had
not shared their rations with the gossiping heroes. As darkness fell,
the sky was reddened for miles with pillars of fire, and for a time the
Caribees thought it was the enemy. But Tom Twigg, who had been with the
major at headquarters, explained to Jack that the army was divided into
three bodies of about ten thousand men each, and that Tyler's column, of
which the Caribees were the advance, were the extreme northern body;
that they were now at Vienna, far north of Manassas, where Schenck had
been beset a month before in his never-enough-ridiculed reconnaissance
by train; that in the morning they were to push on to Fairfax
Court-House and thence to Centreville, where the army was to come
together for the blow at the rebels. Jack and his friends were a good
deal chagrined to learn that they were not as near the enemy as the
column to the south of them, whose fires had been mistaken for
Beauregard's. Though the levee came to an end at "taps," no one felt
sleepy, and the excitement banished the pains of fatigue. Major Mike,
sauntering through the dark lines near midnight, heard the tale still
going on in drowsy monotone, but, good-naturedly, made no sign.

Though not given the skirmish-line next day--the 17th--Jack was
delighted to find that the Caribees led all the rest. With them rode the
commander of the brigade, Colonel Sherman, whom the soldiers thought a
very crabbed and "grumpy" sort of a fellow. His red hair bristled
straight up and out when he took his slouch hat off, as he did very
often, for the heat was intolerable. His eyes had a merry twinkle,
however, that won the hearts of the lads as he rode by, scrupulously
striking into the fields to save the panting and heavily laden line
every extra step he could. Often, in after-days--when Sherman had become
the Turenne of the armies--Jack, who was often heard to brag of his gift
of detecting greatness, used to turn very red in the face when he was
reminded of a saying of his on that hot July day:

"That chap is too lean and hungry to have much stomach for a fight; he
looks better fitted for wielding the ferule than the sword. Schoolmaster
is written in every line of his face and stamped in his
pedagogue manner."

The march that day was south by a little west, and about nine o'clock a
cool morning breeze lifted the clouds of dust far enough above the
horizon to reveal the distant blue of the mountains. The whole line
seemed to come to a pause in the enchanting, mirage-like spectacle. "The
Shenandoah," Jack said, mopping the dust, or rather the thin coating of
mud, from his face and brow, for the perspiration, oozing at every pore,
naturally covered the exposed skin with an unpremeditated cosmetic. The
march to Fairfax Court-House, for which judicial temple the curious
soldier looked in vain, was but eight miles from the point of departure
in the morning, but it was two o'clock in the afternoon when the
Caribees passed the hamlet, turning sharply to the right. They marched
up the deep cut of projected railway, where, for a time, they were
shaded from the sun by the high banks. But, emerging presently on the
Warrenton pike, they saw evidences that other columns--whether friends
or foes they couldn't tell--had recently preceded them. Scores of the
raw and overworked were breaking down now every hour.

The dust and heat were insupportable. Whenever the march came near
water, all thought of discipline was forgotten, and the panting,
miner-like hosts broke for the inviting stream. The officers were
powerless to enforce discipline; when these breaks happened the column
was forced to come to a halt until every man had filled his canteen--and
here is one, among the many trivial causes, that brought about the
reverses of McDowell's masterly campaign. A march that ought to have
been made in twenty-four hours, or thirty at the utmost, took more than
three days! One of those days saved to the army would have enabled
McDowell to finish Beauregard before the ten thousand re-enforcements
from the Shenandoah came upon his flank at Bull Run. But we shall see
that in proper time, for there is nothing more dramatically timely, or
untimely, than this incident in the history of battles, unless it be
Bluecher's miraculous appearance at Waterloo, when Napoleon supposed that
Grouchy was pummeling him twenty miles away.

There was no provost guard to spur on the stragglers; and when, late in
the afternoon, the way-worn columns spread themselves on the western
slope of the hamlet of Centreville, at least a third of each regiment
was far in the rear. Nearly every man had, in the heat and burden of the
march, thrown away the provisions in his haversack, and that night ten
thousand men lay down supperless on the grateful greensward, happy to
rest and sleep. Mother Earth must have ministered to the weary flesh,
for at sunrise, when the music of the bugles aroused them, they started
up with the alert vivacity of old campaigners. Provisions, that should
have been with the column the night before, arrived in the morning.
While the reinvigorated ranks were at coffee, there was a great clatter
in the rear, and presently a _cortege_ of mounted officers appeared,
General McDowell among them. Dick Perley, who was at the brigade
headquarters, with Grandison, came to the Caribees presently with
great news.

The battle was to begin that very day. General Tyler was to go forward
to a river called Bull Run, where Beauregard was waiting. The whole army
was to spread out like a fan and fight him. He had seen the map on the
table, and the place couldn't be more than four miles away. Yes, they
all looked eagerly to the westward now. The mountains in the distance
rolled themselves down into lower and lower ridges, and just about four
miles ahead could be seen a range that seemed to melt into a wide
plateau fringed deeply with scrub-oak and clusters of pine. Jack had
provided himself with a field-glass. Standing in the middle of the
Warrenton pike, a fine highway, that ran downward as solid as a Roman
causeway, for four or five miles, he could see the break made by the
Bull Run River, and--yes, by the glaive of battle!--he could see the
glistening of bayonets now and then, where the screen of woods
grew thinner.

The general, too, was examining the distant lines, and Jack took it as a
good omen that Sherman grew jocose and appeared to be making merry with
Tyler, whose face looked troubled, now that the decisive moment seemed
at hand. But the day passed, and there was no advance. It was not until
late in the evening that the cause became known. The army had been
waiting for supplies, ammunition, and what not, that should have been on
the field the day before. The Caribees were made frantic, too, by what
seemed a battle going on to the south of them, a few miles to the left.
The camp that night was a grand debating society, every man propounding
a theory of strategy that would have edified General McDowell, no doubt,
if he could have been given a _precis_ of the whole. How such things
become known it is difficult to guess, but every man in the columns knew
that the general had planned to put forward his thirty thousand men in
the form of a half-moon, covering about ten miles from tip to tip. The
right or northward horn was to be considerably thicker and of more body
than the left or southern. When the time came this right was to curve in
like a hook and cut the ground out from the left wing of the rebel army.

This is the homely way these unscientific strategists made the movement
known to each other, and it very aptly describes the formulated plan of
battle, save that, of course, there were gaps between the forces here
and there along this human crescent. Long before daylight Sherman's
brigade, with a battery of guns and a squadron of cavalry, set out due
south, leaving the broad Warrenton pike far to their right hand. Such a
country as the march led into, no one had ever seen in the North outside
of mountain regions--deep gullies; wastes of gnarled and aggressive
oaks, that tore clothes and flesh in the passage; sudden hillocks rising
conical and inconsequent every few rods; deep chasms conducting driblets
of water; morasses covered with dark and stagnant pools, where the
pioneers fairly picked their steps among squirming reptiles. A stream,
sometimes large as a river, crawling languidly through deep fissures in
the red shale, protected the left flank of the column. The cavalry was
forced to hold the narrow wood road, as the bush was hardly passable
for men.

"Hi, Jack!" Barney cries, catching his breath at the edge of a muddy
stream, "what sort of a place must the rebels be in if they let us
promenade through such a jungle as this unopposed?"

"I have been thinking of that," Jack replies. And so had every man in
the expedition--for to think was one of the drawbacks as well as one of
the excellences of the soldier in the civil war. But presently, after
five hours of laborious work, a halt is called. The men dive into their
haversacks, and even the brackish water in the nearest sedge pond has a
flavor of nectar and the invigoration of a tonic. On they tear again,
the whole body pushing on in skirmish-like dispersion. Suddenly the land
changes. They are climbing a rolling table-land, cleared in some places
as though the axe of the settler had been at work. The march is now
easier and the picket-lines are strengthened. Then a sharp volley comes,
as if from the tree-tops.

The march is instantly halted. The mass, moving in a column, is
deployed--that is, stretched out to cover a mile or more as it moves
forward; the cavalry divides and rides far to right and left, to see
that no ambush is set to enable the rebels to sneak in behind the vast
human broom, as it sweeps through the solemn aisles of the pines, now
rising in vernal columns thicker and thicker. The firing is going on now
in scattering volleys, and soon the wounded--a dozen or more--are
carried back through the silent ranks. Joking has now ceased. Lips are
compressed; eyes glitter, and the men avoid meeting each other's gaze.
It is the moment of all moments, the most trying to the soldier, when he
is expecting every instant a hurricane of bullets, and yet sees no one
to avenge his anguish on or forestall in the deadly work. But they have
been moving forward all the time, the hurtling bullets sweeping through
the leafy covering, now and then thumping into the soft pine with a
vicious joyousness, as if to say to each man, "The next is for you, see
how well our work is done." For these hideous missiles have a language
of their own, as every man that stood fire can tell. The skirmishers are
now all drawn in. The solid line must do the work at hand. No one but
the commander and his confidants knew the work intended, save that to
kill and be killed was the business to be done. The panting lines are on
high cleared ground now, and they can see absolutely nothing but the
irregular depressions that mark the channel of the Bull Run, as it
rushes down to the Rappahannock. The line is moving along steadily.
Looking to left and right, Jack can see the colors of three regiments,
and his eye rests with pleasure on the bright, shining folds of the
Caribees' dark-blue State flag spread to the breeze beside the stars of
the Union. Are they to cross the river? Evidently, for the command is
still "Forward, bear center, bear right." Then, square in front, where
the thick, broad leaves of the oak glitter in the sun, there is seen a
cylinder of steam-like smoke, with fiery gleams at the end, a crackling
explosion of a hogshead of fire-crackers, then a rushing, screaming
sound in their very faces, then a few rods behind a ringing, vicious
explosion. They are in the very teeth of a masked battery. The Union
skirmishers have been withdrawn too soon. The main line will be torn to
pieces, for retreat is as fatal as advance.

"Lie down, men!" The command rings out and is echoed along the column.
The guns have the range, and the enemy knows the ground. The Caribees
are directly in the sweep of the artillery, and the command comes to
them by company to crawl backward, exposing themselves as little as may
be. Presently two brass guns are brought up behind the Caribees. The
gunners have noted the point of the enemy's fire. The men point the big
muzzles with intrepid equanimity, firing over the prostrate blue coats.
For twenty minutes, perhaps half an hour, this is kept up; then there is
silence on the hill beyond. The column rises to its feet, and at the
command, "Forward!" they start with a rush and a cheer. Five hundred
yards onward, and a solid mass of gray coats confront them. A volley is
fired and returned; the exulting Caribees, with two lines behind them,
give a loud cheer and, in an instant, the gray mass has disappeared, as
if the earth had opened. The skirmish-line, advancing now, picks up a
half-dozen or more wounded rebels, besides two or three who had become
confused in the hasty retreat and run toward the "Yankees" instead of
their own line. Jack's comrade held this conversation with one of the
prisoners:

"I say, reb, what place is this?"

"Mitchell's Ford."

"Much of your army here?"

"'Nuff to lick you uns out of your boots, I reckon."

"What did they run across the ford for, then?"

"Oh, you'll see soon enough--when our folks get ready."

"Who's in command here?"

"General Bonham, of South Carolina."

"How many men, about?"

"Well, there's right smart on to a million, I reckon. They had to cut
the trees down, yonder, to get room for 'em.".

The man's eyes twinkled as he gave this precise approximation; but
Barney, who had brought the humorist in, whispered to the captain to let
him have a moment's speech with the man before he was sent away. The
captain nodded, and Barney said innocently:

"Had anything to eat to-day?"

"Not a mouthful. The trains were all taken up with soldiers coming from
Richmond."

"Have a bit of beef--and here's a cracker or two. You can have some
coffee if the guards will let you make it."

"Old Longstreet himself would envy me now," the rebel cried, his mouth
stuffed with the cold meat and hard-tack, almost as fresh and crisp as
soda-crackers, for the contractors had not yet learned the trick of
making them out of sawdust, white sand, and other inexpensive
substitutes for flour.

"Longstreet?" Barney said, carelessly.

"Yes, that's the commander of the right wing, just below, at Blackburn's
Ford."

"Blackburn's Ford?"

"Yes, that's a mile down, and really behind you uns, for the run makes a
big elbow to the east. I tell you what it is, Yank, you'll see snakes
right soon, for our folks are behind you."

Sure enough, a crackling to the left confirmed this, and the captain,
who had listened to Barney's adroit cross-questioning, sent the man with
a note to Colonel Sherman, a few rods in the rear. Ten minutes later the
column fell into ranks again and moved off swiftly southeastward. A
march of a mile or so brought them to a bold ridge cutting down almost
aslant to the clear water of the run. The skirmishers, for some reason,
had not pushed ahead to explore the ground, and the regiments, marching
in close masses, came out in a rather disorderly multitude on the ridged
crest. A hundred yards nearly below the water-course was fringed with
thick copses of oak, and the gently ascending slopes on the western bank
were completely hidden from the Union lines. A few gaunt, almost
limbless trees rose up spectrally on the ridge, offering the compact
masses neither shelter from the sun nor security from the enemy--if
there were an enemy near.

Dick came up to Jack out of breath with great news, just as the Caribees
were aligning themselves to move forward.

"General Tyler just told Richardson"--a brigade commander--"that the
rebels had retreated from Manassas, and he (Tyler) is going to have the
glory of occupying the works: that McDowell thought the army would have
to fight a big battle to get--"

"Glory!" the group shouted, near enough to hear; and the delightful
story ran up and down the lines by a telephone process that was much
swifter than Edison's electric invention. A roar of gratulatory triumph
broke--a roar so loud and inspiring that for a moment the densely packed
masses did not distinguish an ear-splitting outburst just in front of
them. But on the instant piercing shrieks among the huddled
cheerers--cries of death and agony--changed the paeans of triumph into
wails of anguish and mortal pain. A panic--instant, unreasoning,
irresistible--fell upon the mass, a breath before so confident. A third
of the regiment seemed to wither away. The colors fell in the struggling
group in the center. Hoarse shouts, indistinguishable and ominous, could
be vaguely heard from the staff and line.

Direr still, hideous clamor of masked cannon, right in their very faces,
added the horror of surprise to the disorder of attack, and the thick
blue lines broke in irrestrainable confusion. The terror of the unknown
seized officers and men alike. In five minutes the crest was cleared,
and the ignoble vanity, ignorance, and self-sufficiency of one man had
undone in an hour the splendid work of the commander-in-chief. A _melee_
of miserable, disgraceful disorder ensued. The rebel sharpshooters,
hurrying to the flank, poured in hurtling, murderous volleys, filling
the minds of the panic-stricken mob with the idea, the most awful that
can enter a soldier's mind, that his line is surrounded. Hundreds threw
away guns and everything that could impede flight. Other hundreds fired
wildly wherever they saw moving men, and thus aided the rebels in
killing their own comrades, for it was into the supporting Union forces
they directed their random shots. The fire grew every instant more
bewildering. Shots came in volleys from every direction, and the
helpless hordes darted wildly together--sometimes toward, instead of
from the enemy. Had the rebels been as numerous as they were crafty, the
brigade could have been seized _en masse_. But now Sherman is at hand
with fresh regiments, others are at his heels, and the contest takes on
some of the order of intelligent action. The rebels, too, are
re-enforced, but the dispositions made by the Union chiefs bring the
combat to equal terms. The clamor of cannon and musketry continues an
hour, though the lines are now among the friendly undergrowth, and the
losses are not serious. But the Caribees, with the regiment supporting
them, have been blotted from the scene as a factor. For hours the
scattering groups fled--fled in ever-increasing panic, and it was long
after dark before the remnants of the regiment came into camp at
Centreville.

Poor Jack! He gave no heed to supper that dreadful night. He threw
himself on the ground, too exhausted to think and too disheartened to
talk. He couldn't understand the shameful panic. The Caribees were not
cowards; every man in the regiment had longed for the battle. When under
fire at Mitchell's Ford, an hour earlier than the disaster at Blackburn,
all had stood firmly in place, fought with coolness, and gave no sign of
fear. The volume of fire when they broke was not much greater than the
Mitchell's Ford volleys. During the night Grandison came to camp and
assembled the officers. He expressed his sorrow at the sudden shadow
that had fallen on the fair fame of the regiment, but since the panic
had not been followed, as such outbreaks often are, by the total
destruction of the men, there would be abundant chance to redeem the
disgrace of the day. He had himself begged the division commander to
give the men another trial, and he had staked his commission on their
doing such duty as would remove the tarnish of the afternoon from
their banners.

The officers had been dispirited. Major Mike had raged over the field,
through the woods, a very angry man indeed, belaboring the fleeing men
with his sword and imploring those he couldn't reach to "come to me
here. Dress on me. There's no call to be afeard. We've more men than
they have, and we'll soon wallop them."

But the resounding blows on the backs of those near the officer did not
give the encouraging emphasis to his appeal that captivates men whose
reasoning faculties are almost gone for the moment. Before daylight on
the next morning--Saturday, the 20th--the companies were called together
and little addresses were made to the men by the officers. The substance
of Colonel Grandison's words was imparted, and the hope expressed that
when, in the course of that or the next day the regiment was again under
fire, they would show that the panic of yesterday had not been
cowardice. The men said nothing, and every one was glad that the light
was so dim that the officers could not look in their faces, though, as a
matter of fact, the shoulder-straps had shown as little fortitude as the
muskets in the dispersion. All that day the forces rested, the Caribees
providing themselves with new arms and equipments, or the two or three
hundred who had flung their own away. During the afternoon an incident
happened in the division that lessened the mortification of the
Caribees. A splendid regiment and a battery of bronze guns came into the
highway from the extreme of the line that was expected to take part in
the battle which all knew would be opened the next morning. Every one
was surprised to see the men moving without muskets and the colors
wrapped in their cases. "Where you bound for?" some one at the roadside
yelled curiously.

"Our time is out; we're going home."

Then a derisive howl followed the line as it passed through the masses
of the army, and remarks of an acrid nature were made that were not
gratifying to the departing patriots:

"Don't you want a guard to protect you?"

"Does your mamma know you're out alone?"

"Wait till to-morrow and we'll send Beauregard's forces to see you safe
home."

The men and officers looked very conscious and uncomfortable under the
gamut of jeers, for word went along the line, and all along the route to
the rear they passed through this clamor of contemptuous outcry.

"Well, I thought we had reached the eminent deadly pinnacle of
disgrace," Barney said, with a sigh, as a group of Company K watched the
considerable number taken out of McDowell's small army, "but this sight
makes me feel like the man on trial for murder who escapes with a
verdict of manslaughter."




CHAPTER X.

BLOOD AND IRON.


Late at night Dick came down to Jack's bivouac with a strange tale.
McDowell had come to Tyler's quarters storming with rage. He had accused
that officer of disobeying orders in forcing a fight on the fords of
Bull Run where he had been told to merely reconnoitre.

The staff believed that Tyler would be cashiered, for he had not only
wrecked the general's plan of battle, but he had given the rebels the
secret of the movement and demoralized one wing of the army by putting
raw soldiers in front of masked batteries that could have been detected
by proper outpost work. Then one of the staff reported a speech Tyler
had made when his troops rushed over the empty rebel breastworks and
forts around Centreville. His officers were discussing the probable
forces Beauregard had behind the crooked stream beyond.

"I believe we've got them on the run," Tyler said, exultingly, "from
what we see here. I tell you the great man of this war is the man that
plants the flag at Manassas, and I'm going through to Richmond
to-night."

"Not much comfort in knowing we've got such a fool for a commander,"
Jack cried, thinking of the disgrace of the day before and of the small
chance the regiment had under such a chief to redeem its prestige on the
morrow. All personal griefs, everything but the pending battle, were
driven from the men's minds as the signs of the momentous work of the
morrow accumulated. The hospital corps was up in force. The yellow flag
floated from an immense tent near the roadway. A great _cortege_ of
general officers rode away from McDowell's quarters about ten in the
evening. The haversacks were filled with three days' cooked rations. One
hundred rounds of ammunition to a man were dealt out to each company.
Everything not absolutely necessary was ordered to the company wagons.

The talk in the camp that night was of home--of anything and everything
but the dreadful to-morrow, so long looked forward to with eager hope,
now regarded with uncertainty that was not so much fear as the memory of
the panic at Blackburn's Ford. Jack was provided with a large atlas map
of Virginia, and with the bits of information given by Dick he was able
to conjecture the probable plan of the next day. The cronies of Company
K listened in delight to his exposition of the action.

"Here," he said, "is the Bull Run. It makes two big elbows eastward
toward us--one about four miles to the northwest of us, the other about
eight miles to the southeast of that, and about four miles from our
right hand here! The rebel we quizzed yesterday says that there are five
fords between the Warrenton pike bridge--that's just ahead of us yonder
at the end of the road we are on--the last one is McLean's Ford, at the
very knuckle of the elbow that is crooked toward us a mile west of where
we were yesterday. That is near the railway, which it is Beauregard's
business to fight for and our business to get, for then he will have to
fall back near Richmond to feed his army. Now from the railway where it
crosses Bull Run near Mitchell's Ford to the Warrenton road, which
Beauregard must also hold, is about nine miles. He must guard all these
fords, and we must fight for any one or two of them that we need to
cross by. The only problem is, whether our general is going to strike
with his right arm at Mitchell's Ford, his left arm at this very
Warrenton road we are on, or whether he means to butt the middle of the
line of Beauregard's battle to break him into two pieces?"

"What would Frederick the Great or Napoleon do?" Nick asked, absorbed in
Jack's confident predications.

"If Frederick had equal forces he would have a reserve just where we
shall be in the morning--there at that point marked 'Stone Ridge,' and
move a heavy mass to the southwest below McLean's Ford there, where you
see the railway runs along the run for a half-mile or more. Or he would
send this body to the northeast, over there where you see Sudley Springs
marked in rather large letters, and he would by either one of these
movements turn the enemy's flank--that is, get in behind him and force
him to change front to fight, something that is rarely done successfully
in battle. Napoleon would, on the contrary, mass all his best troops at
the stone bridge, open the fight with every piece of artillery he could
bring to bear, and in the panic send divisions ten deep across
the bridge."

"Which would be the better plan?"

"Ah! that no one can say. The first is sure enough and less dangerous,
if the commander is not certain of his men, because you notice that we
felt excellent and confident all day, so long as we were marching
forward and pushing the enemy from our path. The trial in battle is to
be kept standing under fire, not sure where your enemy is; and then you
noticed that our own guns behind us, sending shot and shells over us,
were just as trying as the rebels'. Only soldiers of the very first
class can be depended on in the Napoleon tactics. We are not soldiers of
the first class; and you may be sure McDowell, who was many years in
Europe, and who is a trained officer, will make use of the manoeuvres
best calculated to bring out whatever there is in his men. As a matter
of opinion, I should say that, in view of the miserable affair on the
right yesterday, he will strike out for Sudley Springs, where we shall
have the rebels just as you would have me if you were at my side, held
my left arm behind me, ready to break my back with your knee planted
in it."

Jack was sergeant of the guard that night, and it was in the group of
sentries awaiting their relief every two hours, re-enforced by his
tent-mates of Company K, that these learned dissertations on war were
carried on. It was a never to be forgotten Saturday night to millions
yet living. In Washington the President and his Cabinet sat far into the
morning hours receiving the dispatches from the weary and disappointed
chief--for, if Tyler had not made his miserable attempt to reach
Manassas, the battle would have been fought that vital Saturday, and the
result would have been another story in history. As the morning broke,
red and murky, the army was up and in line, but without the usual noisy
signals. The artillery-horses began to move first wherever it was
possible. The heavy guns were pushed forward on the sward, to prevent
the loud metallic clangor that penetrated the still air like clashing
anvils. By half after six, the advance brigade, the Caribees in their
old place, were within gunshot of the stone bridge.

"Ah ha, Jack! It is the Napoleonic plan!" Barney cried, as the artillery
took places in front of the masses lying on the ground.

"Wait," Jack cried, owlishly. "The battle isn't fought always where the
guns are loudest."

But the guns were now loud and quick. The rebels, behind a thick screen
of trees, took up the challenge, and every sound was drowned in the roar
of the artillery. A few far in the rear were wounded--those nearest the
rebels were in the least danger, whether because the guns could not be
sufficiently depressed, or because the gunners were poor hands, couldn't
be determined. A breathless suspense, an insatiate craving to see, to
move, to fly forward, or do anything, devoured the prostrate ranks. The
firing had gone on two hours or more, which seemed only so many minutes,
when to the group near General Tyler a courier, panting and dusty, rode
in great excitement.

"General Tyler, the major-general has just learned that the enemy have
crossed in force at Blackburn's Ford, below you. You are at once to take
measures to protect your left flank."

"Ah ha, Jack; Frederick's on the other side, eh?" Barney said, as,
standing near the group, these words reached their ears.

"Perhaps there are two Fredericks at work. Look yonder!" handing him his
glass as he spoke.

"Thunder! our whole army is marching over there to the right, and we
sha'n't even see the battle. They are four miles off. Why, what an
immense army we must have! I thought this was the bulk of it, but we're
not a brigade compared to that."

"Now, Barney, I feel confident that is the grand movement. Look how they
fly along! The fields are as good as roads out there, and if it were not
for the artillery they could make five miles an hour. Now, keep your
ears open, my lad: you'll hear music off there to the northwest, music
that will make Beauregard sick, if that courier's information is exact.
For, don't you see, as we are placed here, with that gully to our left
and the thick woods in front, we could hold this ground against six
times our number."

Company K were now sent forward to the right to relieve a body of
skirmishers that had been hidden on the margin of Bull Run, some
distance to the westward of the stone bridge. Jack, going forward with
his glass, noticed an officer among the men, but not catching sight of
his face did not recognize him.

"Is that a rebel or one of our fellows?" one of the men said, pointing
to a horseman disappearing in the woods four hundred yards to the right
and in front of the company, marching in a straggling line two abreast,
"by the flank," as it is called. Jack took his glass to discover, but
the rider had disappeared. An instant after from a knoll, Jack, glass at
eye, was examining eagerly the field on the other side of the river,
when a horseman suddenly shot into view, riding desperately.

"By George, it is the same man! I wonder how he crossed the stream?
There must be a bridge down there among those thick trees and bushes,"
Jack said, excitedly.

"Are you sure, sergeant, that is the same man that was in the woods to
the right there, five minutes ago?"

Jack turned; the officer was at his shoulder. He saluted respectfully,
recognizing, with a thrill of joy, old Red Top, as the company
called Sherman.

"Yes, colonel, it's the same man. He was in his shirtsleeves and had a
blue scarf tied about his arm. There can be no mistake; several of us
saw him quite plainly."

"If that be true, we've gained a half-day's work in two minutes." He was
looking diligently through the glass as he spoke, and his eye brightened
as he marked the man until he disappeared. He turned to an orderly that
was following at a distance leading a horse. Mounting this lightly the
colonel rode to the head of the company and said in a short,
decisive tone:

"Come ahead men, at a double-quick, until you strike the stream." He
kept beside the men as they moved. In fifteen minutes they were at the
water's edge. Then the company was deployed as skirmishers, two thirds
halting where they struck the water and the rest keeping on up the bank
of the river for a few hundred yards. Sherman was eying every inch of
the bank until, suddenly reaching a break where fresh tracks of a horse
were visible, he directed his orderly to follow, and plunged into the
water. It was not up to the horses' knees from bank to bank. Riding
back, his face aglow, the colonel ordered the captain to cross half his
men and station them up and down on the bank where they would not be
seen by the rebels on the high ground above. Then, addressing Jack,
he said:

"Sergeant, select two or three trusty men. Follow the bank of the stream
until you come to General Hunter's division, which may be a mile,
perhaps more, to the right yonder; you can tell by the firing soon. Tell
General Hunter that we have discovered a ford and shall not have to
fight for the stone bridge. We shall be across in no time and take the
enemy in the rear. If you can't find Hunter, give this intelligence to
any officer in command. Stay."

He scribbled a line on a sheet of his order-book, saying: "This will be
your authority. It's better not to write the rest for fear you should be
captured. In case you are in danger tell each man with you what to say,
so that there will be more chances of getting the information where it
will do good; and remember, sergeant, that this news in Hunter's hands
will be almost equivalent to victory. Ah!"

He paused again. Reverberating crashes came from the high grounds up the
river. "You will have no trouble in finding him now. Those are Hunter's
guns. Hurry."

Glowing, grateful, big with the fate of the battle, Jack had Barney,
Nick, and another, whom he charged with the duty of historian, detailed
for this duty of glory. The group set off with a fervent Godspeed from
the company sheltered among the thick pines and oaks.

"Now, boys," Jack said, every inch the captain, "we must spread out like
skirmishers. Our chief danger will be from the left, as no one will be
likely to be in the water but our own men, and we must look as sharply
for them as for the enemy. I will take the center; you, Barney, the
left, next to me; and you, Nick, four paces farther to the left." Jack
looked at his watch. It was just 9.30, Sunday morning, July 21, 1861.
The crash of musketry ahead now became one unbroken roar, with a
_crescendo_ of artillery that fairly shook the ground the messengers
were darting over, for all were on a dead run. The bushes grew thick on
the hillside and their branches were stubborn as crab thorns. Hell, as
Barney afterward remarked, would have been cool in comparison to the
heat as the adventurers tugged and wrestled forward. Now guns were
roaring on every side save the river. Behind, before, to the left, the
thunders played upon the parched land. At the end of a half-hour the
bullets and shells passed over the group as Jack and his squad pushed
along the hilly way. Twice, commands, and even the clicking, of what
Jack knew must be rebel guns sounded not twenty paces away, but, thanks
to the thick bushes, the scouts passed unseen, and, thanks to the noise
of battle, unheard. But now the danger is from friends, not enemies.
Balls come hurtling through the trees across the stream, and in a low
voice Jack bids Barney summon Nick. Then all slip down to the water's
edge, and make their way painfully through the marshy swamps, the
cane-like rushes that fill the narrow valley. The run has been a fearful
strain upon Nick, and at length he falls, gasping, in a clump of
cat-tails.

"What is it, old fellow?" Jack cries in alarm.

"O Jack! I can't go a step farther. You go on and leave me. I shall
follow when I get breath."

He was white and gasping. Barney filled his canteen from the running
water, and, wetting his handkerchief, laid it on Nick's parboiled head
and temples.

"Best a few minutes," Jack said, soothingly. "I will reconnoitre a bit."
Stripping off his accoutrements, he clasped a tall sycamore growing at
the crest of the ravine, and when far up brought his glass to bear. A
third of a mile to the left and southward, he could see a regiment with
a flag bearing a single star, surrounding a small stone farm-house on
the brow of a gentle hill. They were firing to the west and toward the
north, where the black clouds obscured his view. But the red gleam in
the smoke told of at least a dozen guns, and he knew that the main
battle was there, though the fury of it reached far to the east, near
the stone bridge which he had quit an hour before. Then through the veil
of smoke long, deep masses of blue emerge and make for the rebel front
on the brow of the hill, fairly at Jack's feet; the enemy redoubles the
fire; two guns at their left pour canister into the advancing wall of
blue. It never wavers, but, as a group falls to the earth, the rest
close together and the mass whirls on.

Jack feels like flying. Oh, the grandeur of it, the fearlessness, the
intoxication! He almost falls from the tree in his excitement. But he
takes a last sweep of the belching hill. Hark! Loud cheers in the trees
back of the rebels, far to the southeast, perhaps a mile and a half;
then the flaunting Palmetto flag flying forward in the center of deep
masses of gray. Which will reach the hill first? He can not quit the
deadly sight. Ah! the blue lines are pressing on now; the cannon-shots
pass over their heads into the devoted line of gray, desperately
thinned, but clinging to the key of the battle-field. But, great God!
Perhaps his delay is aiding the enemy. He sees the route now
clear--straight to the west--and no rebels near enough to intervene. He
descends so fast that his hands and legs are blistered, but he is down.

"Look sharp, boys; you must follow me as best you can. I know the
route--there is a forest path directly to our lines, and we shall be
there in twenty minutes--I shall, at least." He doesn't stop to see
whether he is followed or not, but dashes on, and the rest after him. He
is far out of sight in an instant. It is only by the crackling of the
branches that the others keep his course. The way is between steep,
precipitous hills, which explains how they could be so near the battle
and yet not in it, nor harmed by the missiles flying sometimes very near
them. At a deep branch of the stream the three rearmost came in sight of
Jack, up to his armpits in water and pushing for the shore.

While they are hailing him exultantly he sinks out of sight; an awful
anguish almost stops the others, but Barney, flinging his musket and
impediments off as he runs, leaps far into the stream, and when the rest
reach the spot he has Jack by the hair, dragging him to the bank. He is
fairly worn out by the stress, and the others loosen his coat, stretch
him on the brown sward and rub his hands, his body. It is ten minutes,
it seemed an hour, before he is able to get up, and the rest insist on
carrying his accoutrements. Then the wild race is begun again, every
instant bringing them nearer the pandemonium of battle. Suddenly the
sharp commands of officers are heard in front and to the left. Is it the
enemy, or is it friends? The group halts in an agony of doubt. How can
they find out? Barney takes out his handkerchief and puts it on his gun,
which he was careful to go back and recover when Jack was on the bank. A
ray of bright red suddenly flits above the thick tops of the scrub-oaks.

Yes, God be praised, there is the flag of stars, and there are blue
uniforms! With a wild hurrah, drowned in the musketry to the left, they
rush forward, are halted by a picket guard, exhibit Sherman's order, and
are directed to the commanding-officer. That personage has no knowledge
of General Hunter's whereabouts, but Colonel Andrew Porter is just
beyond, commanding the brigade. To him Jack makes known Sherman's
message, and is directed farther to the southwest, the Union right now
facing nearly to the east in the execution of McDowell's admirable flank
manoeuvre.

Now among their own, Sherman's couriers run more peril than when
skirting the edge of the battle, for the shells are directed at the line
they are pursuing. They push to the rear and continue southeastward,
where Hunter's headquarters are supposed to be. But Jack is easy on the
score of his mission, since the general, who is nearest the stone
bridge, has been apprised, and well knows that the fire which has been
coming near his left flank is Sherman's. Until, however, he has executed
his orders literally Jack won't be satisfied, and plunges on, the others
following, nothing loath. But it is a way of pain for the lads now.
Every step they come upon the dead and dying. The air is filled with
moaning men, whinnying horses, the hurried movement of stretchers, the
solemn solicitude of the hospital corps. The line of foremost battle is
less terrifying, less trying than this inner way of Golgotha, and the
four are well-nigh unnerved when they reach a group where the commanding
officer has been pointed out.

"General Hunter?" Jack says, addressing an officer with a star.

"My name is Franklin. General Hunter was wounded an hour ago. What's the
matter?"

Jack gave his message, and Franklin said, cheerfully: "That's good news.
You're a very brave fellow. Go a few yards in the rear yonder and you'll
find General McDowell. He'll enjoy your message."

On the hill they halt electrified.

Thick copses of scrub-pine dot the gently sloping sward. Here and there
clumps of tall pines stand in the bare, brown sod as if to guard the
young outshoots clustering about them in wanton dispersion. Cow-paths,
marked only by the worn edges of the bushes, run in zigzags across the
hillside and up to the plateau. The remnants of rail fences strew the
ground here and there. The low roof of the farm-house can be seen far
back even from the depression, where the lines of blue are now resting a
brief, deadly half-hour.

The sun is now behind the halted line of blue; the bayonets, catching
the light, make a sea of liquid, mirror-like rivulets hovering in the
air, with the bushy branches of pine rising like green isles in the
shimmering tide. The men are filling their cartridge-boxes; new
regiments are gliding into the gaps where death has cut the widest
swath. From the woods, cries, groans, commands, clashing steel as the
men hustle against each other in the rush into line, prelude the Vulcan
clamor soon to begin. Men, bent, sometimes crawling, with stretchers on
their shoulders, glide through the maimed and shrieking fragments of
bodies, picking out here and there those seeming capable of carriage.
Other men, prone on their faces, hold canteens of tepid, muddy
water--but ah! a draught to the feverish lips which seems godlike
nectar. Against the stout bodies of the trees, armless men, legless
trunks, the maimed in every condition of death's fantastic sport, hold
themselves limply erect, to gain succor or save some of the vital stream
pouring from their gaping wounds.

Couriers dash up to the impassive chief, calm-eyed, keen, alert,
surveying the line, dispatching brief commands, receiving reports. It is
Franklin. With the air of a marshal on a civic pageant, perplexed only
by some geometrical problem denying the possibility of two right lines
on the same plane, he glances upward toward the brow of the plateau. The
four flags had been increased by half a dozen. Ah, they have received
aid! A tremendous crash comes from the left. That must be Sherman. He is
on the rebel rear. One strong pull, and the two bodies will be united,
his left arm reaching Sherman's right. The shining mirage of steel above
the green isle sinks. The clash of hurtling accoutrements comes up
musically, tranquilly from the low ground. The blue mass, first
deliberately, then in a quiet, regular run, passes like a moving
barricade up the sloping hillside. Then from one end of the long wall to
the other white puffs as of some monster breathing spasmodically.

The air is a blur of sulphurous blackness. The bullets are as thick as
if a swarm of leaden locusts had been routed from the foliage, and taken
wing hillward. Then behind, through the gaps in the trees, big, whining,
screeching swarms of another caliber shells fly over the wall of blue.
In a moment the ground of the plateau is torn, the red clay flying far
into the air. But now the blue wall is girdling the very crest of the
hill; it stops, shrivels. Long gaps are cut in its broken surface. The
hillside is dotted with sprawling figures. The crest is a ragged edge of
writhing bodies and struggling limbs. Forward! The wall is advancing,
but shorter. It is within reach of the shining guns--spouting flame and
iron in the very face of the dauntless wall. Then there is a pause. The
smoke hides everything but the maimed and quivering heaps that strive to
crawl backward, back to the crest, back to the deeps that are not rest
nor security. The hillside is like a field, covered with sheaved
grain--with a thousand mangled bodies that had been men.

Then to these wrestling specters--for in the dim smoke and Tartarean
atmosphere the actions of loading and aiming take the shape of huge
writhing, convulsing, monstrous, grappling--come quick-moving lines of
help. They rush through them, over them. The thirteen cannon behind the
struggling hydra of gray seem one vortex--sulphurous, flaming, spitting,
as from one vast mouth, scorching fire, huge mouthfuls of granite venom.
Back--back, the gray masses break in sinuous, definite, slow-yielding
disruption.

Then a sudden inrush from the left of the broken gray, where smoke and
space play fantastic tricks with the sunshine. Miraculously a dark mass
is projected on the shimmering spectrum, and a ringing voice is heard:

"We are saved; we are re-enforced. We will die here!" Then high above
the din, in the exultant tumult of the deadly won ground, the nearest in
blue hear a stentorian voice--grim, deliberate, exultant:

"Look where Jackson stands like a stone-wall! At them, men! Let us
determine to die here, and we will conquer."

Die he did, when the yelling horde in the sudden outrush grazed the edge
of the Union besom sweeping over the plain in a rush of death. Then
behind these spectral shapes came others--thousands--with wild, fierce
shouts. The blue mass is thinned to a single line. Men in command look
anxiously to the rear. Where is Burnside? Where are the twelve thousand
men whom Hunter and Heintzelman deployed in these woods two hours since?
Back, slowly, fiercely, but backward, the slender wall of blue is
forced; not defeated, but not victorious. All this Jack sees, and he
turns heartsick from the sight.

When the straggling couriers reached the point designated as McDowell's
headquarters, he had gone to the eastward of the line, and, faithful to
the command given him, Jack set out with Barney, leaving the others to
deliver the message in case he missed the general. They emerged
presently on the edge of a plateau, whence nearly the whole battle could
be seen. Jack climbed a tall oak to reconnoitre the ground for McDowell,
but, as his glass revealed the battling lines, he shouted to Barney to
climb for a moment, to impress the frightful yet grandiose spectacle
upon his mind. Far off toward the stone bridge, now a mile or more
northeast of them, they could see the Union flags waving, and mark the
white puffs of smoke that preceded the booming of the cannon. Every
instant the clouds of smoke came southward, where the rebel lines were
concealed by the thick copses. But they were breaking--always breaking
back anew. In twenty minutes more, at the same rate, the hill upon which
the rebel lines nearest the tree held the Union right at bay would be
surrounded on two sides.

This, for the moment, was a sulphurous crater, the fire-belching demons,
invisible in the smoke. Through the glass Jack could see the lines
clearly--or the smoke arising above them. The enemy had been pushed back
nearly two miles since he had left Colonel Sherman a few rods above the
stone bridge. The Union force, as marked by the veil of smoke, curved,
about the foemen, a vast crescent, seven miles or more from tip to tip.
The bodies opposing were scattered like a gigantic staircase, with the
angles of the steps confronting each other step by step. But now the
Union ranks at Jack's feet rush forward; a group of riders are coming to
the tree, and Jack descends hastily to meet the general. He is again
disappointed. It is not McDowell. At a loss what to do, he salutes one
of the officers and states his case, recognizing, as he turns,
General Franklin.

"I don't see that you can do better than remain where you are, or, still
better, push to the brow of that hill yonder and act as a picket. In
case you see any force approaching from this side, which is not likely,
give warning. Our cavalry ought to be here, but it isn't. If you are
called to account when the battle is done, give me as your authority. I
take it your brigade will be around here pretty soon, if they make as
rapid work all the way as they have made since eleven o'clock. If the
cavalry come, you can report to the nearest officer for assignment."




CHAPTER XI.

THE LEGIONS OF VARUS.


The two free lances set out now, relieved of all responsibility, and
determined to watch the open fields and woods to see that this part of
the field was not surprised. The hill to which the general had directed
them was farther from the battle than they had yet been, but the work
going on to the northeast showed that this would soon be the western
edge of the combat if Sherman continued advancing. They are soon on the
hill, and Jack posts himself in a tree with his glass. There is a lull
in the quarter they have just quit. The smoke rolls away, and now he can
see streams of gray-coats hurrying to the edge of the plateau, where,
two hours before, he had encountered Porter's brigade. Can it be
possible that Porter's troops do not see these on-rushing hordes? They
are moving on the right point of the crescent, and unless the Union
commander is alert they will break in on the back of the point; for
Jack, without knowing it, was virtually in the rebel lines--that is, he
was nearer the rebel left flank, the foot of the long, bow-shaped
staircase, than he was to the tip of the Union crescent.

But no! The Stars and Stripes fly forward; they are on the very crest
whence the defiant guns spat upon them. But now the smoke covers
everything. Then there is a calm. The ground is clear again. The gray
masses are pouring up to the crest in still greater numbers; a large
body of them march down the hill in the rear of the Union line concealed
by the woods; they march right up to the ranks where the red-barred flag
is flying! What can it mean? Neither side fires. There must surely be
some mistake. Hark! now the blue line discovers--too late--that the mass
is the enemy, and half the line withers in the point-blank discharge.
They are swept from the ground. Jack is trembling--demoniac. The gray
mass springs forward; they have seized the guns--four of them--and turn
them upon the disappearing blue. Then a hoarse shout of delirious
triumph. The guns are lost; the day is lost, for now there are no
blue-coats in sight. But no! A still wilder shout--electrifying,
stentorian--comes across the plateau. The blue mass reappears; they come
with a wild rush in well-ordered array; they are the regulars, Jack can
tell by their movements. It must be the famous Rickett's battery he saw
at Centreville in the morning. In five minutes the tale was retold, and
the guns, snatched from the worsted gray-coats, are safe in the hands of
their masters. Again the smoke obscures the picture; again it clears
away, and now the gray are in greater force than before, and the
horseless batteries are again the prize of this rapacious grapple.
Swarming in from three sides, the gray again hold the contested pieces.
The blue vanish into the thick bushes. Another irruption, another pall
of smoke, and Jack's heart bounds in exultant joy, for he sees the New
York flag in the van. Sherman has reached the point of dispute. But
alas! the guns are run back, and as the gray lines sway rearward in
billowy, regular measure, they retain the Titanically contested trophies.

The sun is now far beyond the meridian. The Union lines are closing up
compactly. One more such grapple as the last and the broad plateau where
the rebel artillery is massed, pointing westward, northward, eastward,
will be won. But a palsy seems to have settled on the lines of blue.
They are motionless, while their adversaries are hurrying men from some
secret place, where they seem to be inexhaustible. The whole battle is
now within the compass of a mile. But where can these hordes come from?
Surely, General McDowell has never been mad enough to leave them
disengaged along the fords! No; they do not come from that direction.
They come at the very center of the rebel rear. Can it be that troops
are arriving from Richmond? The Southern lines are longer than the
Northern, but they have been since the first moment Jack got a glimpse
of them. He could see, too, that they were thinner: that on the spur of
the plateau in front of the massed rebel artillery a single brigade was
holding the Union mass at bay. He can almost hear the rebel commands as
the re-enforcements pour in. But now the thunder breaks out anew, rolls
in vengeful fury around the western and northern base of the plateau.
The gray lines stagger; the falling men block the steps of the living.
Surely now McDowell is going to do or die. Yes. The iron game goes on;
the blue lines jostle and crush forward. They are at the last wall of
resistance. But what is the sound at his very feet? As Jack looks down
in the narrow way between the hill he is on and the plateau on the very
edge of the Union line--in fact, behind it now, for it has moved forward
since he took post--a rushing mass of gray-clad soldiery is moving
forward on the dead run. In one instant the head of the column is where
General Franklin rode but an hour or two before. He looks for Barney. He
can see him nowhere. He climbs down in haste and discovers his comrade
soundly sleeping against the base of the tree.

"Barney, the army is ruined!"

"Is the battle over?"

"Oh, no, no, but it will be in a moment. Hark, hear that!"

A roar of musketry--it seemed at their very feet. Then an outbreak of
yells, so sharp, so piercing, so devilish the sound, that the marrow
froze in their veins, arose, as if from the whole thicket about them.

"Is it too late to warn General Franklin?" Barney asked, trembling.

"Ah, Barney, we are as bad as traitors; we ought to have seen these
rebels before they got near. If we had done our duty this would never
have happened. Perhaps it is not too late to get back. Let me go up and
see where we can find a way without running into the enemy."

Reaching his perch again, Jack cast his despairing eyes toward the fatal
hill. It was now clear of smoke, and there wasn't a regiment left on it.
His heart leaped for an instant, the next it was lead, for the ranks
that had disappeared were down on the brow of the hill--in the valley--
rushing forward, unresisted, the red and blue of the Union, mixed with
the stars and bars of the rebellion; but, worse than all, the ranks of
gray were sweeping in overwhelming masses quite behind the lines of
blue, cutting them down as a scythe when near the end of the furrow. To
the eastward Sherman still clung desperately to the crests he had won,
but Jack saw with agony that, slipping between him and the river, a
great wedge of gray was hurrying forward. His last despairing glance
caught a body of jet black horses galloping wildly into the dispersing
ranks of blue. He came down from the tree limp, nerveless, unmanned.

"Well?" Barney asked.

"It's all over--we are ruined!"

"The army, you mean?"

"Ah, yes! the army and we too."

"But what's going to become of us?"

"I don't much care what becomes of us--at least I don't care what
becomes of me!"

"But if we don't get back to our regiment, they'll think we're
deserters."

"Good God, yes! I forgot that; I think I can find the way back. But
we'll have to be careful, the enemy are all around us. I can hear them
plainly, very near. Follow me, and don't speak above a whisper."

Then, with swift movement, always as near the thick bushes as they could
push, they fled faster and faster, as fear fell more and more heavily
upon their quickened fancies. The thought of the repute of deserters
lent them endurance, or they must have broken down before the weary
shiftings of that dreadful flight. They are now near the spot where they
had met Porter's pickets in the morning. The sounds of battle had died
out at intervals, renewed now and again by an outcry of cheers, a quick
fusillade, then more cheers, and then an ominous silence. But now there
is a continuous roll of musketry near the knoll, back of the Warrenton
road. The two wanderers, breathless, with torn uniforms, swollen faces,
halt, gasping, to take their bearings. They can see the turnpike far
beyond the stone bridge half-way to Centreville: they see crowds fleeing
in zigzag lines over the open fields, see horses plunging wildly, laden
down by two and even three men on their backs; they see vehicles
overturned at the roadside, whence the horses have been cut or killed by
the rebel shells; they see an army, in every sense a mob, swarming
behind the deserted rebel forts; they see orderly ranks of shining black
horses this side the stone bridge charging the fleeing lines of blue;
they see shells whirling like huge blackbirds in the sky, suddenly
falling among the skurrying thousands; they see a shell finally burst on
the bridge, shiver a caisson to fragments, and then all sign of
organized flight comes to an end.

But near them, meanwhile, a sullen fire replies with desperate
promptitude to the rebel shots.

"If we can get over to the men fighting at the edge of the woods, we may
be killed or captured, but we won't be disgraced!" Jack cries.

Again they make a wide circuit through the woods, and now the firing is
near at hand, coming slowly toward them. They have only to wait and they
will be among the forlorn hope. Ah, with what fervent joy Jack marks the
Union banner, flapping its twin streamers among the hurtling pines! They
are near it; they are under it! Their own guns are no longer available;
hundreds are lying at hand; they seize them. The line is firing in
retreat. It is a sadly depleted battalion of Keyes's regulars,
steadfast, imperturbable, devoted. A handful of them has been forgotten
or misdirected. The rebels, uncertain whether it was not a trap to snare
them, move with caution, while far to the left a turning column is
hurrying to hem the Union group in on every side. There are hardly three
hundred blue-coats in the mass, but their volleys are so swift, so
regular, so steady, that they make the impression of a thousand. The
enemy felt sure, as was afterward learned, that there was at least
a regiment.

A young captain, soiled, ragged, his sleeves hanging in ribbons, the
whole skirt of his coat gone, moves alertly, composedly in the center,
seizing a gun when one comes handy on the ground, where there are plenty
scattered.

"Steady, men, steady! We shall be at the water's edge, soon, and then we
can give them hell!"

Never music sounded sweeter in Jack's car than that jaunty epithet
"hell"! How inspiring! How little of the ordinary association the word
brought up! Now they were traversing slowly the very ground Jack and his
comrades had flown over in the morning. Still firing--still working with
all his heart in the deadly play, Jack sidles to the officer and
cries out:

"Captain, I know a ford that will take us across above the stone bridge.
We discovered it this morning. Shall I guide that way?"

"Guide if you can; but fire like seven devils, above all!" the captain
cried, seizing two or three pouches lying in a mass and emptying the
cartridges into his pockets.

"There, keep to the left sharp, and we shall come to a deep gully where
the water is only knee-deep," Jack cries, also replenishing his
cartridge-box, which had shrunk under the rapid work of the last
half-hour.

"What regiment are you, sergeant?" the captain cries, looking for a
moment at the tattered recruit.

"Caribees of New York, Sherman's brigade."

"And how came you off here? Your brigade was near the right of the line
at the stone budge." The captain asked this with a shade of suspicion in
his voice.

Jack explained his mission, and the officer, who had been dealing out
the timely windfall of ammunition, nodded.

"Poor Hunter was shot early in the advance. It would have been victory
to our flag if the poor old follow had been wounded before the action
began. He lost three hours in the attack, and gave the rebels a chance
to come up from Winchester."

Now Jack understood the mysterious legions that seemed to spring from
the earth. They were Johnston's army from the Shenandoah.

"Keep up heart, men: Burnside and Schenck are near us somewhere. They
are in reserve, and they'll give these devils a warm welcome, if they
push far enough after us."

Then the steady volleys grew swifter, if that were possible, the enemy
moving steadily after the slowly retiring group. But now there is a
clear field to cross, so wide that the smallness of the force must be
detected. The captain halts the line, takes his bearings, divides the
little army into two bodies, orders one to move at a double-quick
directly across the open; the rest are stretched out as skirmishers. He
retires with the first squad across the field, directing the skirmishers
to hold the ground until they hear three musket-shots from the wood
behind. The rebels can now be seen closing in very near. But the
skirmish-line, spreading over a wider front, evidently perplexes them,
and they halt. The three shots are presently heard, then the
skirmish-line flees in groups across the bare downs, the vociferating
yells of the gray-coats fairly drowning the hideous clamor of
the muskets.

"Ah! we're saved," a lieutenant cries, waving his cap like a madman.
"Look! there are men in the wood yonder, to our right; they are coming
this way!"

Jack turned, he was near the captain; and he marked, with deadly panic,
a look of despair settle down on the heroic, handsome face. What could
it mean? Didn't he believe that there were men there? Jack handed him
his own glass--the captain had none.

"By Heaven, our flag! But what troops can they be in that quarter? They
must be surrounded, like ourselves.--Sergeant, can you undertake a
dangerous duty?"

"With all my heart," Jack cried, heartily.

"What's your name and company?"

"John Sprague, Caribees, Company K."

"Slip around the edge of the skirt of bushes. You'll be within an arm's
length of the enemy all the way. Reach the place where we saw those men
a moment since. When you get there, if they are friendly, fire a shot.
Here, take this pistol. Fire that; I shall recognize it from the
musketry. If they are the enemy, fire all the barrels as fast as you can
and retreat. You run great danger; you can only by a miracle escape
capture; but it is our only resource for the next charge. We must
surrender or die," he added, looking wofully at the meager remnant of
his company. Before the words had fairly ended, Jack is off like a shot,
forgetting Barney, forgetting everything but the extrication of this
grand young Roman. As he skurried along, sometimes on hands and knees,
he blames himself for not learning the captain's name. He feels sure
that a day will come when the world will know and admire it. He has
gained the other corner, and in a moment he will be in the thick copse
where the Union flag had been seen, but as he makes a dash through a
clump of laurel he is confronted by two men, muskets in hand.

"A Yank, by the Lord! Surrender, you damned mudsill!"

For answer Jack raised the pistol in his hand and fired. The man fell,
with a frightful yell. The other leveled his musket fairly in Jack's
face; but before he could pull the trigger a report at his ear deafened
Jack, and the second man staggered against the tree.

"Ah, ha! me boy, the rear rank did the best work there," Barney cried,
as Jack turned to see whence the timely aid had come, "A day after the
fair's better than the fair itself, if the rain has kept the girls
away," and Barney laughed good-humoredly.

"Well, 'pon my soul, Barney, it's a shameful thing to say, but all
thought of you had gone from my mind. I should not have let you come if
you had proposed it, but now we're in for it. Ah--!"

As he spoke the Union flag he had seen came forward, but it was in the
hands of a rebel bearer, and was upside down in mockery. The sight was
enough. He fired the shots as agreed upon, firing two at the group
marching heedlessly forward, as the skirmish-line was far ahead, or they
supposed it was, for the two men disabled by Jack and Barney were the
advance, as it was not supposed that any but stragglers were near at
hand, and the company were returning to their regiment. In an instant a
fierce volley is returned, and Barney, who is fairly in the bush behind
a huge tree, hears a low groan. He looks where Jack had been and sees
him lying on the ground, stifling an agonized cry by holding his left
arm over his mouth. Barney might have escaped, at least he might have
delayed capture, but coming from behind the tree, he holds up his hands,
and flinging himself on the ground beside his comrade takes his head
upon his knee and awaits the worst.




BOOK II.

_THE HOSTAGES_.




CHAPTER XII.

THE AFTERMATH.


There were not so many millions of Americans in 1861 as there are
to-day. But they were more American then than they are now. That is, the
Old World had not sent the millions to our shores that now people the
waste places of the West. It was not until after the civil war that
those prodigious hosts came--enough to make the populace of such empires
as fill the largest space in history. That part of the land that loved
the flag cherished it with a fervor deeper than the half-alien race that
first flung it to the breeze under Washington. They loved the republic
with something of that passionate idolatry that made the Greek's ideal
joy--death for the fatherland; some of that burning zeal and godlike
pride that made the earlier Roman esteem his citizenship more precious
than a foreign crown. But until the battle on that awful 21st of July
proved the war real--with the added horror of civil hate--Secretary
Seward's epigram of ninety days clung fast in the public mind.

Up to Bull Run there was a vague feeling that our army, in proper time,
would march down upon the rebels like the hosts of Joshua, and scatter
them and the rebellion to uttermost destruction in one action. It was
upon this assumption that the journals of the North satirized, abused,
vilified Scott, and clamored day by day for an "advance upon Richmond."
The damnation of public clamor, and not the incompetency of the general,
set the inchoate armies of Scott upon that fatal adventure. But that
humiliating, incredible, and for years misunderstood Sunday, on the
plateaus of Manassas, where, after all, blundering and imbecility
brought disaster, but not shame, upon the devoted soldiery, aroused the
sense of the North to the reality of war, as the overthrow at Jemmapes
in 1793 convinced the Prussian oligarchy that the republic in France
was a fact.

It was a dreadful Monday in the North when the first hideous bulletins
were sent broadcast through the cities and carried by couriers into
every hamlet. For hours--sickening hours--it was not believed. We have
awakened many a morning since 1861 to hear of thrones overturned, armies
vanquished, dynasties obliterated; to hear of great men gone by sudden
and cruel death: but the anger and despair when Booth's cruel work was
known; the shuddering horror over Garfield's taking off; the amazement
when the hand of Nihilism laid an emperor dead; the overthrow of Austria
in a single day; the extinction of the Bonapartes--these things were
heard and digested with something like repose compared to the
bewildering outbreak that met the destruction of our army at Manassas.

It was not the dazed, panic-stricken, panic anguish that followed
Fredericksburg or the second Bull Run. It was not the indignant, fretful
wrath that rebuked official culpability for the destruction of the grand
campaign on the Peninsula. It was a startled, incredulous, angry
amazement, in which blame afterward visited upon generals or Cabinet,
was humbly taken on the people's shoulders and echoed in a moaning _mea
culpa_. For days all the people were close kin. In the streets strangers
talked to strangers; the pulpit echoed the inextinguishable wrath of the
streets; the journals, for a moment restrained into solemnity, echoed
for once the real voice of an elevated humanity and not the drivel of
partisanship nor the ulterior purposes of wealth and sham. Even
schoolboys, arrested in the merry-making of youth, looked in wonder at
the sudden reversal of conditions. Boys well remember in the school that
Monday, when the northern heavens were hung in black and grief wrung its
crystal tresses in the air, the master began the work of the day with a
brief, pathetic review of the public agony, and dismissed the classes
that he was too agitated to instruct. There were no games on the
greensward, no swimming in the river, no excursion to the Malvern cherry
groves. The streets were filled with blank faces and whispering crowds
unable to endure the restraint of routine or the ordinary callings of
life. Parties were obliterated, or rather from the flux of this white
heat, came out in solidified unity that compact of parties which for
four years breathed the breath of the nation's life, spoke the purposes
of the republic, and amid stupendous reverses and triumphs held the
public conscience clear in its sublime duty. The woes of bereavement
were not wide-spread; the killed at Manassas were hardly more than we
read of now in a disaster at sea or a catastrophe in the mines. The
whole army engaged hardly outnumbered the slaughtered at Antietam,
Gettysburg, or Burnside's butchery at St. Mary's Hill.

Hence the marvel of the instant fusion, the swift resolve of the
Northern mind. The battle was the sudden grapple of aggressive
weakness--catching the half-contemptuous strong man unaware and rolling
him in the dust. Brought to earth by this unlooked-for blow, the North
arose with renewed force and the deathless determination that could have
but one issue. The people, when the benumbing force of the surprise was
mastered, flew together with one mind, one voice, one impulse. The
churches, the public halls, the street corners, moving trains, and
rushing steamers, were such hustings as the Athenian improvised in the
porticoes, when her orators inflamed the heart of Greece to repel the
barbarians, to die with Leonidas in the gorges of the Thermopylae.

Ah, what an imposing spectacle it was! The blood of wrath leaped
fiercely in the chilled veins of age; the ardor of youth became the
delirium of the Crusaders, the lofty zeal of the Puritans, the
chivalrous daring of Rupert's troopers, and the Dutch devotees of
Orange. A half-million men had been called out; a million were waiting
in passionate eagerness within a month; two hundred and fifty millions
of money had been voted--ten times that amount was offered in a day.
Every interest in life became suddenly centered in one duty--war. It
touched the heart of the whole people, and for the time they arose,
purified, contrite, as the armies of Moses under the chastening of
the rod.

In Acredale there were sore hearts as the dreadful news became more and
more definite. For days the death lists were mere guess-work; but when
the routed forces returned to their camps in Washington the awful gaps
in the ranks were ascertained with certainty. The Caribees were nearly
obliterated. Of the thousand men and over who had marched from Meridian
Hill only four hundred were found ten days after the battle. Elisha
Boone had hurried at once to Washington, charged by all the fathers,
mothers, brothers, and sisters of the regiment to make swift report of
the absent darlings. Kate was besieged in the grand house with tearful
watchers, waiting in agonizing impatience for the fatal finality.
Olympia, to spare her mother the distress of the vague responses her
telegrams brought from Washington, spent most of the time at the
Boones', where, thanks to the father's high standing with the
Administration, the earliest, most accurate information came. Finally he
wrote. He had seen Nick Marsh, who gave the first coherent narrative of
Jack, Barney, and Dick Perley. They had been seen--the first two in the
last desperate conflict. An officer (the hero whom Jack had so much
admired, and who turned out to be Gouverneur K. Warren) had escaped from
the forlorn hope left to dispute the rebel charge upon the flying
columns. He gave particulars that pointed with heart-breaking certainty
to the death of the two boys. Young Perley had been lost sight of since
noon of the battle. He had followed the path taken by Jack and his
comrades across the flank of the enemy. He had been seen at
Heintzelman's headquarters, but after that no one could trace him.
Wesley, too, had been left near the stone bridge with a ball in either
his arm or thigh, the informant was not quite sure which, as he fell in
a charge of the line. Boone telegraphed to Kate that he was going
through the lines with a flag of truce so soon as the affair could be
regulated, and proffered his best offices for the Acredale victims.

Everything had been prepared by Olympia and her mother for an instant
departure so soon as positive information came. With them Marcia Perley
went, trembling and tearful, and Telemachus Twigg, to extricate his son
from danger, for it was uncertain what his status was in the forces.
Kate, too, joined the melancholy pilgrimage that set out one morning
followed to the station by weeping kinsmen imploring the good offices of
these ambassadors of woe. The sleeping-car gave the miserable company
seclusion, if not rest. They were not the only ones in quest of the
missing, for as yet there was no certainty as to the fate of those left
on the field of battle. Later reports had been more encouraging, for
hundreds who were set down as prisoners or missing began to be heard
from as far northward as the Maryland line. In the station at Washington
Boone met his daughter. Twigg hurried to him and asked:

"Any further news, Mr. Boone? We're all here--about half Acredale."

"Yes, I see; but there is no more news of the Caribees. We learn that
the wounded have been sent to Richmond, and I shall set out for there
to-morrow."

Mrs. Sprague, with Olympia and Merry, drove to the house of a friend
she had known years before, whose husband was a Senator. The Boones--or
rather Kate--bade them a cordial adieu as they drove off to the
National Hotel.

Then the most trying part of the quest began. The War Department was
besieged with applicants, mostly women. Orders had been issued to forbid
all crossing the lines, and the despairing kinsfolk of the lost were in
a panic of impatient terror. In vain Olympia called upon eminent
Senators who had been friends of her father; in vain she invoked the aid
of the Secretary of State, who had been the family's guest at Acredale.
Once she penetrated, by the aid of strong letters, to the Secretary of
War. He was surrounded by a hurried throng of orderlies, officers, and
clerks, and even after she had been admitted to his office Olympia was
left unnoticed on a settee, waiting some sign to approach the dreaded
presence. His imperious and abrupt manner, his alternation of
deferential concern for some and disdainful impatience for others, gave
her small hope that he would heed her prayer. She waited hours, sitting
in the crowded room, ill from the oppressive air, the fixed stare of the
officers, and the sobbing of others like herself waiting a word with the
autocrat. At length, late in the afternoon, when the crowd had quite
gone, she heard the Secretary say in an undertone:

"Send an orderly to those women and see what they want."

Each of the waiting women handed credentials to the young man, and each
in turn arose trembling and stood before the decisive official at the
great, paper-strewn desk. There was no attempt to soften the refusal, as
he turned curtly from the pleaders; and Olympia, shrinking from the
ordeal, was about to step out of the room, when a tall, care-worn man
shambled in, glancing pityingly at her as she arose, half trembling,
recognizing the President.

She stepped in front of him in a desperate impulse, and, throwing up her
veil, cried piteously:

"O Mr. Lincoln, you are a father, you have a tender heart; you will
listen to the bereaved!" He stopped, looking at her kindly, and put his
left arm wearily on the desk by his side.

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

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

"Send you across the lines?"

"Oh, if God would put it in your heart!"

"It's in my heart fast enough, my poor child, but--"

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

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

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

Olympia, speechless with gratitude reverence could hardly articulate:

"My mother, myself, and Miss Marcia Perley."

"Another mother?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Here we are. The hospital's still right smart over yonder in the
trees."

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

"Oh, yes; I'm detailed to remain with you until you have found out about
your kinsfolk."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A ton of lead?" Olympia repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

To relieve him Olympia smiled sadly, saying, "Won't you take us back,
please?"

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

"Could we possibly get any water--my mother is very much overcome?"

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

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

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

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

"We are most grateful to you, sir."

"Oh, don't mention it. Are you going far?" "Yes, we're going to
Richmond, to--to find our boys, lost in the battle two weeks ago."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, no; I am from Wilmington, but I have kinsfolk in Richmond, I am on
General Beauregard's staff. My name is Ballman--Captain Ballman."

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

"Do you know a Mr. Atterbury in--in your army?" she asked, blushing
foolishly.

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XIII.

A COMEDY OF TERRORS.


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

"We'll catch old Abe on our next trip ef we go on like this--eh, Ben?"

"I reckon. I'm jess going to take a furlough now. Hain't seen my girl
fo' foah months."

"How much did you pick up?"

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I do, but I don't see that it's different from any other road."

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

"What do you mean, Bob?"

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

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

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

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

"You are feeling better, aren't you, lieutenant?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, what has happened? You are worse!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's why you've come to console the afflicted?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Carcassonne," Jack murmured.

"Carcassonne--what's that?"

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

"There, there--stop. You are talking again. You shall read the poem to
me--that is, if it isn't a glorification of the North."

"No; Carcassonne was a city of the South."

"Really--you must not talk. I'm not going to open my lips again until we
get to the boat."

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

"How have you borne the fatigue? I hope Rosa hasn't let you talk?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XIV.

UNDER TWO FLAGS.


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

"Here, you Towhead, you're company clerk; you read so that we can all
hear."

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

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

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

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

"Did you wish to see me, Mrs.--Mrs.--"

"You are not Mrs. Sprague?"

"No; my mother is very ill. I am Mrs. Sprague's daughter. Can I--"

"Well, Miss Sprague, I think I can cure your mother. I--"

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

"I know what the disease is your mother is suffering from."

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

"Don't make any disturbance; don't faint. Your brother is alive and
well! There, there--I told you."

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

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

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

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

"Is Mrs. Sprague, here?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"'What part of the field are you from?' Davis asked, huskily.

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

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

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

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

"'Is President Davis here?' he asked, riding close to me, but not
halting.

"'He has just ridden off yonder.' I pointed toward the cloud of dust
east and north of us.

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

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

"'Did you'ns leave a lock of your hair with old Mas'r Lincoln?'

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

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

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




CHAPTER XV.

ROSEDALE.


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

"What a cruel boy, to leave his family and--and--run into such dreadful
danger!" Merry expostulated.

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

"How did you know? When did you come?"

"Jack, Jack! Where is he? How is he?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes; I believe the Atterburys make merchandise of them."

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," Jack said, unconsciously, "women enjoy crying--"

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

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

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

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

"There was really no war talk, Vint, except such war as women always
raise, contention--"

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

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

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

"How do you prove that?"

"All men are liars; women love men; therefore--"

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

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

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

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

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

"Have you read it?" Jack asked, innocently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Slaves?"

"Yes."

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

"Come, Jack, I won't listen to politics," Olympia cried, with a warning
look.

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

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

"But we've got far away from the crying and the babies," Vincent began,
when Jack interrupted, fervently:

"Thank Heaven!"

"You monster!" the two girls cried in a breath.

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

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

"What did you fancy them?"

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

"Claim their due?" Jack added, slyly.

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

"And to spare my feelings you won't name him now."

"Exactly," said Rosa.

"How touching!" exclaimed Vincent.

"I left all my blood to enrich your soil, or I'd blush," replied Jack.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This doesn't sound much like soldiering," Jack said, dreamily.

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

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

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

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

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

"Lincoln?" Rosa asked, a little disdainfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How d'ye do, Mr. Boone? I hope Wesley is coming on well, sir."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"An old college friend of Jack's has been very kind to us."

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

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

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

"And Miss Kate, Mr. Boone, where is she?"

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

"I should like to call on Wesley--if you don't mind," Dick said,
hesitatingly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XVI.

A MASQUE IN ARCADY.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dick's eyes sparkled. "All right, I'll keep you posted, never fear."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rosa: "Crops, mamma?"

Vincent: "A mistress's eyebrow?"

Dick: "Some other fellow's sister?"

Olympia: "Some other girl's brother?"

Mrs. Sprague: "Giddy girls?"

Merry: "Bad boys?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You're not in earnest?" Jack cried, aghast.

"As earnest as a maid with her first love."

"But who--who--is the miscreant that degrades his cause by such
traffic?"

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

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

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

"I say. Jack, I've found out something."

"What have you found out, you young conspirator?"

"Wesley Boone's trying to get the negroes to help him off."

"The devil he is!"

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

"'De Lor'! Will he take ev'ybody 'long, too, Clem?'

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

"'De Lor'!'

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

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

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

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

Kate was dawdling on the lawn as the two returned to the house. Jack
challenged her to a jaunt.

"Where shall it be?" she asked, readily, moving toward him. "The garden
of the gods?"

"The garden of the goddesses, you mean, if it is the rose-field."

"That's true; a god's garden would be filled with thorns and warlike
blossoms."

"I don't know; a rose-garden grew the wars of the houses of York and
Lancaster."

"Do you remember the scene in Shakespeare where Bolingbroke and Gaunt
pluck the roses?"

"Quite well. There is always something pathetic to me in the fables
historians invent to excuse or palliate, or, perhaps it would be juster
to say, make tolerable, the stained pages of the past. It is brought
doubly nearer and distinct by this miserable war, and the strange fate
that has fallen upon us--to be the guests of a family whose hopes are
fixed upon what would make us miserable if it ever happened."

"It never will. That's the reason I listen with pity to the childish
vauntings of these kind people. They have, you see, no conception of the
Northern people--no idea of the deep-seated purpose that moves the
States as one man to stifle this monstrous attempt."

They walked on in silence a few paces, and Kate continued: "I don't know
how you feel, Mr. Sprague, but I am wretched here. I feel like a
traitor, receiving such kindness, treated with such guileless
confidence, and yet my heart is filled with everything they abhor. It is
not so hard for you, because you and Vincent have been close friends. He
has made your house his home, but I certainly feel that Wesley and I
should go elsewhere, now that he is able to be about."

"Does Wesley feel this--this embarrassment?"

"Passionately. He said, last night, he felt like a sneak. He would fly
in an instant, if he could see any possible way to our lines."

"Pray, Miss Boone, tell him to be very circumspect. I know the Southern
nature. When they give you their heart they give entirely. But the least
sign of--of--distrust will turn them into something worse than
indifference. We may see our way out soon. Caution Wesley against any
act--any act"--he emphasized the words--"that may lead these kind people
to think that he doesn't trust them, or that he would take advantage of
servile insurrection to gain his liberty. Of course, they know that we
are all restive here; that we shall be even more impatient when Vincent
goes--but they could not understand any surreptitious movement on our
part, to enable us to get away."

He hoped that, if she were in Wesley's confidence, she would understand
his meaning. But she gave no sign. She assented with an affirmative
movement of the head, and they walked through the fragrant paths,
plucking a rose now and then that seemed more tempting than its fellows.
At the end of the field of roses a Cherokee hedge grew so thick and high
that it formed a screen and rampart between the house land and a dense
grove of pines which was itself bordered by a stream that here and there
spread out into tiny lakelets. On the larger of these there were rude
"dug-outs," made by the darkies to cut off the long walk from their
quarters to the tobacco and corn fields.

"Was there ever an Eden more perfect than this delicious place?" Kate
cried, as the flaming sun sent banners of gold, mingled in a rainbow
baldric with the blooming parterres of roses.

"I don't know much about Eden, and the little I do know doesn't give me
a sympathetic reminiscence of the place; but I agree with you that
Rosedale is about as near a paradise as one can come to on this earth,"
Jack qualifiedly replied.

"And yet we want to fly from it?"

"Ah, yes; because the tree of our life, the volume of our knowledge, or,
in plain prose, our hearts, are not here, and scenic beauty is a poor
substitute for that. Duty, I am convinced, is the key of the best life.
There are hearts here, noble ones--duties here, inspiring ones. But they
do not satisfy us: they are become a torment to me. I feel like a
soldier brought from duty; a priest fallen into the ways of the flesh."

"Your rhapsodies are like most fine-sounding things, more to the hope
than the heart," Kate murmured, gazing dreamily into the purple mass of
color hovering changefully over the opaque water at their feet. "You
mean they do not reach your heart; that your soul is far away as to what
is here. I think Vincent and Rosa would not agree that life has any more
or narrower limitations here than we recognize at Acredale."

"Let us go on the water." He pulled the rude shallop to her feet and
they got in and went on, Jack not heeding her gibe. "These brackish,
threatening deeps remind me of all sorts of weird and uncanny things;
Stygian pools--Lethe--what not mystic and terrifying. See, the tiny
waves that curl before our boat are like thin ink; a thousand roots and
herbs and who knows what mysterious vegetable mixture colors these dark
deeps? I could fancy myself on an uncanny pilgrimage, seeking some
demon delight."

There was but one oar in the boat, which the negroes used as a scull.
Jack made a poor fist with this, but there was no need of rowing. Kate,
catching a projecting limb from the thick bushes on the margin, sent the
little, wabbling craft onward in noisless, spasmodic plunges. Deep
fringes of wild columbine fell in fluffy sprays from the higher banks as
the boat drifted along the other side. The thickets were musical with
the chattering cat-birds and whip-poor-wills, mingled with a score of
woodland melodists that Jack's limited woodcraft did not enable him to
recognize.

"Who would think that we are within a half-mile of a completely
appointed country house? We are as isolated here from all vestiges of
civilization as we should be in a Florida everglade," Kate said, as the
little craft swam along in an eddy.

"It seems to me typical of the people--this curiously wild transition
from blooming, well-kept gardens, to such still and solemn nature. The
place might be called primeval: look at those gnarled roots, like
prodigious serpents; see the shining bark of the larch--I think it is
larch--I should call it 'slippery' elm if it were at Acredale; but see
the fantastic effects of the little lances of sunlight breaking through!
Isn't it the realization of all you ever read in 'Uncle Tom' or 'Dred'?"

Kate glanced into the weird deeps of foliage, where a bird, fluttering
on the wing, aroused strange echoes. "Ugh!" she said, in a half-whisper,
"I can imagine it the meeting-place of 'Tam o' Shanter's' eldritches
seeing this--but, all the same, do you know it is fascinating beyond
words to me? Should you mind going in a little farther--I should like
the sensation of awe the place suggests, since there can be no
danger--while you are here?"

He gave her a quick glance, but her eyes were fastened on the dark
recesses beyond.

"I should be delighted, but I won't insure your gown, nor--nor half
promise that we shall come out alive."

"Oh, as to that, I'll take the risk."

"I don't know the habits of Southern snakes; but if they are as
well-bred as ours, they retire from the ken of wicked men at sundown, so
we needn't fear them, as the sun is too far down for the snake of
tradition to see or molest us."

They stepped out of the boat at a green, sedgy point, extending from a
labyrinth of flowering vines and creepers. Once inside the delicious
odorous screen, they found themselves in an archipelago of green islets,
connected by monster roots or moss-covered trunks that seemed laid by
elfin hands for the penetration of this leafy jungle.

"Yes; I was going to say," Jack continued, "this swift transposition
from the cultivation of civilization to the handiwork of Nature is
whimsically illustrative of the people. Did you ever see or hear or read
of such open-handed, honest-hearted hospitality as theirs; such
refinement of manners; such sincerity in speech and act? Contrast this
with their fairly pagan creed as to the slaves; their intolerance of the
Northern people; their clannish reverence for family."

"But isn't the inequality of the Southern character due to their strange
lack of education? Few of them are cultivated as we understand
education. Do you notice that among the people we met at
Williamsburg--officers as well as civilians--none of them were equal to
even a very limited range of subjects? All who are educated have been in
the North. Ah--good Heavens!"

Kate's exclamation was due to a sudden sinking in the mossy causeway
until she was almost buried in the tall ferns. Jack helped her out,
shivered a moment, doubtingly, as he exclaimed:

"The sun is nearly down now, though the air is transparent, or would be
if we were in the free play of daylight. I think it would be better to
go back." But they made no haste. Such trophies of ferns and lace-like
mosses were not to be plucked in every walk, and they dawdled on and on
skirmishing, with delighted hardihood, against the pitfalls of bog that
covered morass and pitch-black mud. When the impulse finally came to
hasten back, they were somewhat chagrined to discover that they had lost
their own trail. The point where they had quit the stream could not be
found. Clambering plants, burdened with blossoms, fragrant as
honeysuckle, grew all along the bank, and the bush that had attracted
them was no longer a landmark.

"Well," Jack said, confidently, "the sun disappeared over there; that is
southwest. The house is in that direction--northeast. Now, if you will
keep that big sycamore in your eye and follow me, we shall be nearing
the house, as I calculate."

They pushed on in that direction, but had only gone a few yards when the
ground became a perfect quagmire of black loam, that looked like coal
ground to powder, and was thin as mush.

"This is a brilliant stroke on my part, I must say," Jack cried, facing
Kate ruefully. "We must go back and examine the ground, as Indians do,
and find our entrance trail in that way. I will watch the ground and you
keep an eye on the shrubs. Wherever you see havoc among them you may be
sure my manly foot has fallen there."

Suddenly they were conscious of an indescribable change in the place.
Neither knew what it was. It had come on in the excitement of their
march into the morass--or it had come the instant they both became
conscious of it. What was it? Kate turned and looked into Jack's
blank face!

"I'm blessed if I know what it is, but it seems as if something had
suddenly gone out of the order of things! What is it? Do you feel it; do
you notice it?"

"Feel it--see it--why, it is as palpable, or, rather to speak
accurately, it is as clearly absent as the color from an oil-painting,
leaving mere black and white outlines."

"How besotted I am!" Jack cried; "why, I know. The sun has wholly gone,
and the birds and living things have ceased to sing and move."

"That's it; could you believe that it would make such a change? Why, I
thought, when we came in, the place was a temple of silence, but it was
a mad world compared to this."

"Yes, and we must hurry and get out while we have daylight to help us. I
take it you wouldn't care to swim the lagoon. Let us call it lagoon, for
this place makes the name appropriate."

"Call it whatever you like, but don't ask me to swim it," Kate cried,
pushing on.

"Ah! I have our trail," Jack cries in triumph. "By George, it is wide
enough!" he added, bending over where the thick grasses were crushed and
broken. "See the advantage of large feet. Now, if you had been alone,
'twould have been as hard as to trace a bird's track."

"Is that an implication that I have Chinese feet?"

"No, too literal young woman. It was meant to show you that I am very
much relieved, for, 'pon my soul, I was afraid we were in a very
disagreeable scrape."

"And you are now quite sure we are not?"

"Quite sure. Don't you want to take my arm?"

"Oh, no, thank you. I'm not at all tired. I'm used to longer walks than
this."

"Longer, possibly, but not over such trying ground."

"Oh, yes. I've gone with Wesley and his friends to the lakes in the
North Woods."

"Ah! I've never been there. Are they as bad travel as this?"

"Infinitely worse--Why, what was that?"

"It sounded very like the report of a pistol."

Both stopped, Kate coming quite close to the young man, who was bent
over with his hand to his ear, trumpet-fashion.

"Do you--" He made a warning gesture with his hand, and motioned her to
stoop among the ferns. A halloo was heard in the distance; then a
response just ahead of where the two crouched in the breast-high ferns,
through which the path made by their recent footsteps led. When the
echoing halloo died away, a bird in the distance seemed to catch up the
refrain and dwell upon the note with an exquisite, painful melody.

"Why, it's the throat interlude in the Magic Flute! How lovely it is!"
Kate whispered. "If you were my knight, I should put on you the task of
caging that lovely sound for me."

The distant bird-note ceased, and then suddenly, from the bushes just
ahead of them, it was caught up and answered, note for note, in a wild
pibroch strain, harsher but inexpressibly moving. Jack turned to Kate,
his face quite pale, and whispered:

"It in not a bird. They are negroes. I have read of these sounds. They
are marauding slaves, and we must not let them see us. We must get to
those thick clumps of bushes. Do you think you can remain bent until we
reach them? If not, we will rest every few paces."

"Go on. I can try."

The pibroch strains still continued, rising into a mournful wail, then
sinking info the soft cries of the whip-poor-will. In a few minutes the
perplexed fugitives were deep in a clump of wild hawberries, invisible
to any one who should pass. The strains had ceased as suddenly as they
began. Then a faint hallo-o-o sounded, being answered in the bushes, as
it seemed, just in front of where Jack and his companion stood; voices
soon became audible farther along, ten or more paces. Motioning to Kate,
Jack crept along noiselessly, and fancied he could distinguish forms
through the thick screen of bushes. A voice, not a negro's, said:

"I went to the cove for you--what was the matter?"

"I had the devil's work to get through the posts. For some reason or
other they're getting mighty sharp. I must be back before twelve; what's
been done?"

"Well, the mokes consent to go, but they won't touch the ranch. You'll
have to bring up a few hands; the fewer the better. If them damned
feather-bed sojers wasn't there, we could do the job ourselves."

"When, does the boss get out?"

"Next week. I don't know what day. They'd pay high for him both ways."

"No, we can't nibble there. The cap'n'll pay well. That's square. We
can't afford to try the other now, at any rate. Is the skiff here?"

"Yes; well, get in."

There was a plash and the-receding sound of voices. Jack darted through
the screen of branches, but he could not distinguish the figures, for it
was growing every instant dimmer twilight. He turned to Kate. She was
at his side.

"Who were they--what were they planning? Were they soldiers?" she asked.

"Never mind them now. We must find a way out of this. Our boat can't be
far off. We must follow this line of bushes until we come to the spot we
left. I know I can recognize it, for there was an enormous tree fallen a
few steps from the sedge bank we landed on."

It was a very toilsome journey now, obliged as they were to hug the
obstinate growth of haws, wild alder, and dog roses, which tore flesh
and garments in the hurried flight. They came to the dead tree finally,
and Jack almost shouted in grateful relief:

"You were a true prophet, Miss Boone. You gave utterance to some
Druid-like remarks as we crossed the Stygian pool. The worst your fancy
painted couldn't equal what we've seen and heard."

"I have seen nothing dreadful, and I can't say that I understand very
much of what we heard."

"There is some 'caper' going on to give these cut-throats a chance to
get booty or something of the sort."

"They are probably rebel soldiers planning to sack the commissary."

They were in the boat now, and Jack was sending it forward by lusty
lunges against every protruding object he could get a stroke at; when
these failed he managed to scull after a fashion. They found the
household in consternation when they got back, but Jack gave a
picturesque narrative of their escapade, omitting the encounter with the
negroes which he had charged Kate to say nothing about, as it would only
alarm Mrs. Atterbury. The garments of the explorers told the tale of
their mishaps, and when they had clothed themselves anew supper was
announced. The feast was of the lightest sort: sherbet or tea for those
who liked it; fruit and crackers, honey or marmalade--a triumph in the
cultivation of dyspepsia, Jack said when he first began the eating. But
it was observed that the disease had no terrors for him, for he sat at
the table as long as he could get any one to remain with him, and did
his share in testing all the dishes. He outsat everybody that night
except Dick, who never got tired of any place that brought him near
his idol.

"I'm going up-stairs in a moment, Towhead. Come up after me."

Dick nodded, a gleam of delightful expectation in his eyes. He was just
in the ardent period when boys love to make mysteries of very ordinary
things, and Jack's _sotto voce_ command was like the hero's voice in the
play, "Meet me by the ruined well when midnight strikes." He followed
Jack up the wide staircase and into his own room, for greater security,
as no one would think of looking for them there.

"Now, tell me all you have found out," Jack commanded as he shut the
door. "Have you been among the darkys?"

"I've found out this much. The old negroes are opposed to going away or
in any shape annoying their masters. The young bucks and the women are
very eager to fly. It seems that some one has spread the story among
them that Lincoln has sent Butler to Fort Monroe to receive all the
negroes on the Peninsula. They have been assured that they are to have
'their freedom, one hundred acres of land, and an ox-team.' Where the
report comes from, I can't find out; but there is some communication
between here and the Union lines, I'm positive."

"Has Wesley been with the negroes again?"

"No. I have kept an eye on him all day."

"Where does he go at night?"

"The doctor has forbidden him to be in the night air for the present."

"Well, you keep an eye on Wesley," and then Jack narrated the strange
scene in the swamp, the mysterious calls, and the conversation.

Dick listened in awe, mingled with rapture. "Oh, why wasn't I there?
Just my blamed luck! I would have followed them, and then we should have
known what they were up to. Did you know that a company of cavalry had
gone into camp just below the grove?"

"No--when?"

"This evening. Vincent is down there now."

"Well, you may be sure they suspect something. I wonder if it wouldn't
be better to speak to Vincent?"

"Of course not! What have we to tell him? Simply my suspicions and
Clem's chatter. The little moke may have been lying; I can't see that
any of them do much else."

"The worst of it is, these Southerners are very sensitive about any
allusion to the negroes. They would pooh-pooh anything we might say that
was not backed by proof. It's a mighty uncomfortable fix to be in, Dick,
my boy; though, 'pon my soul, I believe you enjoy it!"

Dick grinned deprecating.

"I think you do, you unfledged Guy Fawkes. I know nothing would give you
greater joy than to put on a mask, grasp a dagger in your hand, and go
to Wesley, crying, 'Villain, your secret or your life!' Dick, you're a
stage hero; you're a thing of sawdust and tinsel. Come to the parlor and
hear Kate play the divine songs of Mendelssohn; perhaps, night-eyed
conspirator, to whirl Polly or Miss Rosa in the delirium of the '_Blaue
Donau_.' Come."

But there was neither dance nor music when they reached the
drawing-room. Everybody was there; Vincent had just come, and the first
words Jack and Dick heard glued them to their places.

"Yes, all the negroes on the Lawless', Skinner's, and Lomas's
plantations have gone. Butler has declared them contrabands of war, and
a lot of Yankee speculators have been sneaking through the plantations,
filling their ignorant minds with promises of freedom, a farm, and a
share of their masters' property. Their real purpose is to get the
negroes and hold them until the two governments come to terms, and then
they will get rewards for every nigger they hold. Oh, these Yankees can
see ways of making money through a stone-wall," and Vincent laughed
lightly, as though the incident in no way concerned him. "Captain Cram,
who is in camp just below in the oak clearing, is ordered to scour the
river-bank to the enemy's lines near Hampton, so we need have no fear of
these enterprising apostles of freedom interfering with our niggers."

"I don't think one of them could be induced to leave us if offered all
our farms," Mrs. Atterbury said, a little proudly.

"There isn't one of them that I haven't brought through sickness or
trouble of one sort or another, and there isn't one that wouldn't take
my command before the gold of a stranger."

"I don't know, Mrs. Atterbury," Mrs. Sprague ventured, mildly. "Gold is
a mighty weight in an argument. I have known it to change the
convictions of a lifetime in a moment. I have known it to make a man
renounce his father, dishonor his name, belie his whole life, deny
his family."

"When a fortune beyond reasonable dreams was placed upon the head of
Charles Stuart, for whom our ancestors fought and beggared themselves,
his secret was in the keeping of scores of peasants, and the blood-money
lay idle. I could cite hundreds of similar proofs, that gold is not God
everywhere. I mean no offense, but you will agree with me that you
Northern people are given up to the getting and worship of money. It is
not so with us. Perhaps because we have it, and with it something that
makes it secondary--birth. I have no fear of the infidelity of any of my
people. I would as soon doubt Rosa or Vincent us the smallest black on
my estate."

She spoke with mild, high-bred dignity, not a particle of assertion or
captious intolerance, but as a prelate might assert the majesty of the
word on the altar, neither looking for dissent nor dreaming that the
spirit of it could exist.

"I'm glad to hear your mother express such confidence, Vint," Jack said
as they walked out on the veranda to take a good-night smoke; "but just
let me give you a maxim of my own, the lock's not sure unless the key is
in your pocket."

"Sententious, my boy, but vague. My mother is perfectly right. Our
niggers are fidelity itself. But since we are so near the Butler lines,
where his agents can sneak up on the river and kidnap the new sort of
contraband, I think it better to take some precaution. Hereafter General
Magruder will have a picket post within two miles of us, between here
and the creek, which offers a convenient point for smuggling."

"I am heartily relieved to hear it," Jack cried, giving something too
much fervor to his relief, for Vincent turned and looked at him in
surprise, but it was too dark in the shadow of the clematis to see his
face, and after a silence Vincent said:

"Mamma has told you that the President is coming to Williamsburg to
review Magruder's troops?"

"No; she hadn't mentioned it. Is he?"

"Yes; he will be there Thursday afternoon, and we shall have the ball
the same evening. He will be here with General Lee, his chief of staff,
and remain all night; so that you will be able to say when you go back
North--something that few Yankees will be able to say during the
war--that you have broken bread with the first President of the
Confederacy."

"I will strive to bear my honors with humility," Jack said.

"It befits the conquered to be humble."

"If I hadn't come in time, you two would have been in a squabble--own
it!" and Rosa drew a chair between them as a peacemaker.




CHAPTER XVII.

TREASON AND STRATAGEMS.


Rosedale was, indeed, Eden in the most orthodox sense to the group so
strangely billeted in its lovely tranquillity. No sooner was the anguish
concerning the invalids off Kate's, Olympia's, and Rosa's minds, than
new perplexities beset them. Rosa was barely eighteen, Kate and Olympia
older by three or four years, but the younger girl was in many essential
things quite as mature as her Northern comrades. But Jack could not
comprehend this, and quite innocently did and said things to arouse the
young girl's dreams. I think I have said that Jack was a very comely
fellow? He was big and brawny, and tireless in good-humor, and the
attractive little gallantries that women adore. He looked as
sentimentally sincere, uttering a paradox, as another vowing eternal
fidelity. He gave every woman the impression that his mind was lost
wondering how he should exist until she gave him the right to call her
his own. Though, as a matter of fact, it is the man who is the woman's
own--when the final word comes.

Rosa was not long in discovering Vincent's happy tumult in Olympia's
presence, and she secretly misunderstood Jack the more that he was so
lavish and open in his adulations. If he rode, he exhausted eulogy in
describing her pose, her daring, her skill; if they danced, as they did
nearly every night until poor Merry's fingers ached from drumming the
unholy strains of Faust, Strauss, and what not, in the old-fashioned
waltzes--he pantingly declared that she made the music seem a celestial
choir by her lightness; in long walks in the rose-fields he exhausted a
not very laborious store of botanical conceits, to make her cheeks
resemble the roses. This assurance, this recklessness, this _aplomb_,
quite bewildered the girl, who posed in Richmond for a passed mistress
of flirting. She had, unless rumor was badly at fault, jilted an
appalling list of the striplings who believed that beard-growing and
love-making were conventionally contemporaneous events. But they had
"mooned" about her and made themselves absurd in vain, while this
unconscious Adonis calmly walked, talked, and acted as if she could know
nothing else than love him, and one day she started in delicious misery
to find that she did--that is, she thought she might if--if? But there
her dreams became nebulous--they were rosy in outline, however, and she
was content to rest there.

The morning after the coming of the cavalry-troop, Wesley was discussing
the never-ending theme of how he was going to get home--with Kate busy
arranging the ferns she had brought from the swamp.

"Really, Wesley, just now you ought to be content. There is no
likelihood of any movement; besides, philosophy is as much a merit in a
soldier as valor--it is valor, it is endurance. You complain of your
unhappy fate, housed here with a lot of women and idlers. How would you
bear up in Libby Prison? There are as good men as you there, my dear;
shall I say better or older soldiers, Brutus? You may take your choice,
and 'count on a sister's blind partiality to justify you!'"

"Oh, don't always talk nonsense, Kate. You're worse than Jack Sprague.
He doesn't seem to have a serious thought in his head from daylight
till bedtime."

"Perhaps he keeps all his sober thoughts for the night, to give them
good company."

"No, but do say what I ought to do."

"You ought to study to make yourself tolerable to your sister, dear, and
agreeable to the other fellows' sisters. I have remarked that the young
man who does that, keeps out of despondency and other uncomfortable
conditions that too much brooding on an empty head brings about."

"I'd like to know what heart I can have to make myself agreeable to
other fellows' sisters when you are always lampooning me; you delight in
making me think I am nobody."

"Don't fear, my dear; if that were my delight I should die an old maid,
never having known delight, for it would need more force than I can
muster to make Wesley Boone, captain U.S.A., anything else than he
is--his father's pride and his sister's joy. No, dear, my delight is to
see you gay and open and frank and manly, self-dependent, grateful for
the consideration shown you, and recognizant of the constant admonition
of your sagacious sister."

"You talk exactly like the woman in George Sand's stupid stories; they
always remind me of men in petticoats."

"That's a weak and strained comparison; not, however, unworthy a
soldier. We always compare, in speech, to strengthen assertion or adorn
it, and when we do we compare what is equivocal or vague, with what is
well known and usual. Now, I do not remember any men in petticoats,
unless you mean the Orientals, who wear a sort of skirt, and the Scots,
who used to wear kilts--but strictly speaking--"

"Do, Kate, for Heaven's sake, be serious for a moment! I have a chance
to escape, no matter how, but I can make my way to our lines without
running any great risk. Now, is it or is it not dishonorable for me
to do it?"

"Seriously, Wesley, just now it would be, while Vincent is here, for he
is in a sense pledged for you to his superior. Further, there is no need
to hurry. You are barely recovered. If you were North you would be in
Acredale; if you were, there is no immediate want of your presence in
the army. The articles we see in the Richmond papers every day, copied
from Northern journals, show that this new general, McClellan, means to
bring a trained, drilled, disciplined army down when he moves. It took
six months to prepare McDowell's useless mass. It will certainly take a
year to put the million men now arming in shape to fight. I may be
wrong, but at the earliest there can be no movement before late in
October. By that time we shall probably have the problem solved by the
Government, and you will go North, having made delightful friends of all
this charming family."

Wesley was even more afraid of Kate's strong sense of honor than of her
biting sarcasm, and he ended the interview without daring to tell her
how far he had compromised himself with the secret agents that were
surrounding the plantation. Dick, running down-stairs in his wake,
encountered Rosa, with her garden hat covering her like the roof of a
disrupted pagoda. She arrested his stride as he was darting toward
the door.

"Here--you--Richard, just come and be of some use to me. I'm housekeeper
to-day, and I want to go to the quarters. Come along."

Now Dick had a double grievance against this imperious young person. He
had fallen into the most violent love with her brown eyes and pink
cheeks the moment he saw her; he had assiduously striven both to conceal
and reveal this maddening condition of mind. But he remarked with
ungovernable wrath that, whenever Jack or Wesley came about, the
heartless young jilt, made as if she didn't know him; quite ignored him,
and cared no more for his simple adoration than she did for the frisky
gambols of Pizarro, the mastiff. But she was so adorable; her Southern
accent was so bewitching; she put so much softness in those amusing
idioms "I reckon" and "Seems like," "You others," and the countless
little tricks of the Southern vernacular, that Dick passed sleepless
hours and delicious days dreaming and sighing and groaning and doing all
manner of unreasonable things--that we all do when we meet our first
Rosas and they light the torch for other feet more favored than our own.

So, when Rosa called him to accompany her, Dick took the round basket
she held out to him, and walked sulkily ahead of her, never opening his
mouth. When he had stalked along through the currant bushes, he half
turned his face; she was walking demurely behind him, and he made a
pretext of picking a currant to give her a chance to come abreast. She
did, and passed him trippingly, saying, as she cast a sympathetic side
glance at him:

"Toothache?"

He stood rooted to the spot with indignant amazement. The heartless
little minx! How dare she talk like that to a soldier?

"Did you call some one, Miss Atterbury?" he said, with chilling dignity.
Usually he called her plain Rosa.

"I thought may be you had the toothache--you kept so quiet."

"No; I haven't got the toothache." Poor Dick! He said, to himself, that
he had much worse. But he wouldn't gratify her with the acknowledgment
of her triumph, and he stalked along with the basket over his head, as
he had often seen the darkeys in the sun. There was a faint little
appealing cry from behind.

"Oh--oh--dear!"

"What is it; are you hurt?" he cried, rushing to where Rosa stood,
balanced on one foot.

"There is a crab thorn an inch long in my foot; it's gone through shoe
and all. That wretched Sardanapalus never clears the limbs away when he
cuts the hedge. I'll have him horsewhipped. Oh, dear!"

"Let me hold you while I look for the thorn."

Dick cleverly slipped his arm about her waist and set the basket endwise
for her to sit on. Then kneeling, he picked out the thorn, which was a
great deal less than the dimensions Rosa had described. But he said
nothing to her about picking the torment out and slipping it in his vest
pocket. He held the foot, examining the sole critically. Finally, as she
moved impatiently, he asked:

"Does it hurt yet?"

"Of course it does, you stupid fellow. Do you suppose I would sit here
like a goose on a gridiron and let you hold my foot if it didn't hurt?
Men never have any sense when they ought to."

He affected to examine the sole of the thin leather of the upper still
more minutely. As she gave no sign of ending the comedy, he said:

"I'm sure, Rosa, if it relieves the pain to have me hold your foot, I'll
sit here in the sun all day--if you'll bring the rim of your hat over a
little--but, as for the thorn, it has been out this ten minutes."

She gave him a sudden push and darted away. He followed laughing,
admonishing her against another thorn. But she deigned no answer. Coming
to the bee-hives, she stopped a moment to watch the busy swarm, and Dick
stole up beside her. She turned pettishly, and he said, insinuatingly:

"Toothache?"

"You know, Dick, you're too trying for anything--holding my foot there
like a ninny in the hot sun. You haven't a thimbleful of sense."

"Well, now we'll test these propositions, as Jack does, by syllogisms.
Let me see. All men are trying. Dick Perley is a man: therefore he
is trying."

"No; your premise--isn't that what you call it?--is wrong. Dick Perley
is only a boy."

"I'll be nineteen in January next."

"Well?"

"Well, your father was married at nineteen. You've said it yourself,
Rosa, and thought it greatly to his credit--at least Vint does."

"You can't imitate my father in that, at least."

"I might."

"How?"

"You could help me, Rosa."

"How?"

"Would you if you could?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On the girl."

"Ah! she's a perfect girl, but she's very young," and Dick eyed Rosa
with ineffable complacency.

"That's bad."

"But she's older than she looks."

"That's worse; you'd grow tired of her."

"No, no; I don't mean she's older than she looks; her mind is older than
her looks."

"Women with minds make troublesome wives. I have refused to let Vincent
marry several of that kind."

"But, my girl hasn't got that kind of mind; it is all sweetness and wit
and gayety and loveliness and--and--"

"Your girl? Who gave her to you?"

"Love gave her to me."

"Oh, well, since love gave her to you, I don't see how I can be of any
service. Down here the mother always gives the girl, unless she have no
mother; then some other kin gives her. But if your girl has all these
qualities you describe, I advise you to get her into your own keeping
just as soon as you can, for that's the sort of girl all the fellows
about here are seeking."

"Very well, I'm ready. Will you help me? It comes back where we
started."

"But you evaded my question."

"What question did I evade? I answered like an encyclopedia!" Dick
cried, immensely satisfied with his own readiness.

"That convicts you; an encyclopedia has nothing about living people."

"Oh, yes; the new ones do." Dick was now very near her as she stood
contemplating the bees, swarming in the comb. "O Rosa--Rosa, you know I
love you, and you know I can never love anybody else. Why will you
pretend not to understand me? I don't want you to marry me now, but by
and by, when I shall have made a name as a soldier, or--or something,"
he added in painful turbulence of joy and fear over the great
words--which he had been racking his small wits to fashion for weeks
past, and, now that they were spoken, were not nearly so impressive as
he had intended they should be.

"My dear Richard, you are a perfect boy--a very delightful boy, too, and
I am extremely fond of you--oh, very, very fond of you--but you really
must not make love to me. It isn't proper," and Rosa glanced into his
eyes with a tender little gleam, that gave more encouragement than
rebuff--for it came into her mind, in a moment, that it was not a time
to hurt the bright, eager love--so winning, if boyish.

"Nonsense, Rosa, it is perfectly proper; everybody makes love to you;
Jack makes love to you, and he is as good as engaged--" But here it
suddenly flashed in Dick's mad head that he was meddling, and he stopped
short. Rosa had turned upon him with a flash of such scorn, such
indignant pain, that he cried:

"No, no; I don't mean that; but you know fellows do make love to you,
and why mayn't I?"

She flirted away from him too angry or mortified to speak. He could not
see her face, for she pulled the ample breadth of the hat-brim down,
which served at once as a veil to shut out her visage and a sweeping
sort of funnel to keep him far from her side, as she tripped
determinedly to the pleasant group of clean, whitewashed cabins, where
the negroes abode. Poor Dick, vexed with himself--angry at her for being
irritated-waited in the hot sun until she had ended her commands, and
when she came out to return he repentantly sidled up, imploring pardon
in every movement. She couldn't resist the big, pleading blue eyes, and
said, quite as if there had been deep discussion on the point:

"I don't think you mean to be a bad boy."

"I'm not a boy, I'm a soldier. It isn't fair in you to call me a boy."

"You're not a girl."

"If I were I wouldn't be so heartless as some I know."

"And if I were a boy I wouldn't be so silly as some I know."

"Yes, I think Southern boys are quite soft."

"Come, sir, my brother _was_ a Southern boy."

"Yes, but he always lived North, and is like us."

"Jackanapes!"

"Dear Rosa."

"How dare you, sir?"

"Oh, just as easy, I dare do all that becomes a man--who dares do more
is none. You are Rosa, and you are dear--"

"Not to you."

"You cost me enough to be dear and you are lovely enough to be 'Rosa' in
Latin, Rose in English, and sweetheart in any tongue."

"You're much too pert. Boys so glib as you never really love. They think
they do and perhaps they do--just a little."

"Ah! a 'little more than a little,' dear Rosa."

"You're quoting Shakespeare, I suppose you know? I'll quote more: 'A
little more than a little is much too much.'"

"A little less than all is much too little for me. So, Rosa, give all or
none."

"I don't understand you."

"That's proof you love me. Girls never love fellows they understand."

"Prove that I love you."

"Well, you don't hate me. You don't hate Vincent. Therefore you love
him. Ergo, you love me."

"Simpleton."

"True love is always simple. Here, take this white rose as a sign that
you don't hate me." He plucked a large half-opened bud from a great
sprouting branch and held it toward her.

"But the red rose is my favorite."

"Well, here is a red one. Give me the white. That is my favorite. Now
we've exchanged tokens. The rose always goes before the ring. I'll
get that."

"If you were a true lover you would wear my colors."

"These white leaves will grow red resting on my heart."

"When they do I will listen to you."

"Will you, though? It is a promise; when this white rose is red you will
love me?"

"Oh, yes, I can promise that."

"Dear Rosa!" He was very near her as she disentangled an obtruding vine
from her garments, and before she was aware of his purpose he had
audaciously snatched a kiss from her astonished lips.

"You odious Yankee! I haven't words to express my disgust--abhorrence!"

"Don't try, love needs no words: but I'll tell you; let me put this
white rose to your lips; it will turn red at the touch, and in that way
you can take your kiss back, if you really want it; then there'll be a
fair exchange. I--"

"Hello, there! are you two grafting roses?"

It was Wesley, coming from the lower garden, where the stream was
narrowest beyond the high wall of hedge.

"Oh, no, Mr. Boone; Richard here is studying the color in flowers. He
has a theory that eclipses Goethe's 'Farbenlehre.'"

"Oh, indeed!" Wesley was quite unconscious of what Goethe's doctrine of
colors might be, so he prudently avoided urging fuller particulars
regarding Dick's theory, and said, vaguely;

"You have color enough here to theorize on, I'm sure."

"Yes, we have had very satisfactory experiments," Dick assented naively,
stealing a glance at Rosa.

"But quite inconclusive," she rejoined, moving onward, the two young men
following in the penumbra of her wide hat.




CHAPTER XVIII.

A CAMPAIGN OF PLOTS.


Meanwhile, there were curious events passing and coming to pass on the
seven hills upon which the proud young capital of the proud young
Confederacy stood. Rome, in her most imperial days, never dreamed of the
scenic glories that Richmond, like a spoiled beauty, was hardly
conscious of holding as her dower. Indeed, such is the necromantic
mastery of the passion of the beautiful that, once standing on the
glorious hill, that commands the James for twenty miles--twenty miles of
such varied loveliness of color, configuration, and _mis en scene_, that
the purple distances of Naples seem common to it--standing there, I say,
one day, when the sword had long been rusting in the scabbard, and the
memory of those who raised it in revolt had faded from all minds save
those who wanted office--this historian thought that, had it been his
lot to be born in that lovely spot, he, too, would have fought for State
caprices--just as a gallant man will take up the quarrel of beauty,
right or wrong!

Thoughts of this sort filled Barney Moore's mind too, that delicious
September afternoon as he stood gazing dreamily down the river, toward
that vague morning-land of the sun's rising, where his mind saw the long
lines of blue his eyes ached to rest on. Barney had left the kindly roof
where he had been nursed back to vigor. He had quit it in a fashion that
left a rankling sorrow in his grateful heart. Vincent had represented to
Jack the inconvenience it would be, the peril, rather, for him to assume
the guardianship of so many enemies of the Confederacy. Scores of the
old families of the city were under the ban simply because they had
pleaded for deliberation before deciding on the secession ordinance. The
Atterburys had their enemies too. It was pointed out that Vincent and
Rosa had been educated in the North; that Mrs. Atterbury had spent many
of her recent summers there. Their devotion to the Confederacy must be
shown by deeds. It was true they had given twenty thousand dollars to
the cause, but what was that to threefold millionaires? General Lee,
their kinsman, had shaken his Socratic head solemnly when Rosa, at the
War Department, told him, as an excellent joke, the strange chance that
had brought Vincent's college chum and his family under the kind
Rosedale roof.

Richard Perley was, therefore, deputized to rescue Barney from his false
position and give him a chance for exchange when the time came. He
journeyed up to Richmond, and, one day, laid these facts before Barney,
who instantly saw his friend's dilemma, and at once set about inventing
a _ruse_ that should extricate him, without mortifying the kind people
who had befriended him. When he was able to be about, he feigned a
desire to go to his friends in Arrowfield County, south of the James,
and was bidden hearty Godspeed. Then, with funds supplied by Jack, he
gained admittance to a modest house far out on Main Street, where the
city merges into the country. They were simple people, and his thrilling
tale of being a refugee from Harper's Ferry was plausible enough to be
accepted by more skeptical people than the Gannats.

Day after day Barney skirted furtively about the uncompromising walls of
Libby and Castle Thunder, where once or twice he had gone with his hosts
to make a mental diagram of the place for future use. Little by little
he became familiar with Richmond, which, like a new bride, gave the
visitor welcome to admire her splendid spouse, the Confederate
government. He learned all the plots of the prison, and became the
confidant of Letitia Lanview, known to every exile in Richmond as the
friend of the suffering--St. Veronica she was called--after a poem
dedicated to her by a young Harvard graduate, rescued by her
perseverance from death in Libby Prison. With this lady he drove all
about the environs of Richmond, and several times far out toward the
meditated route of flight, in order that he might be able to lead the
bewildered refugees. He got the whole landscape by heart, and could have
led a battalion over it in the dark. Then he passed days wandering over
the Libby Hill, down in the bed of the "Rockets," as the bed of the
James was known in those days; he learned the ground to the very beat of
the patrols that guarded the wretched prisoners in the towering
shambles. One whole night, too, he spent in marking the course of the
guards as they changed in two-hour reliefs. With his facts well
collected he visited Mrs. Lanview, and at last he was confronted by
Butler's agent. This agent was a middle-aged man, who had evidently once
been very handsome, but dissipation had left pitiable traces upon his
fine features, and his once large, open eyes, that perplexingly
suggested some one Barney tried in vain to recall--vainly? The man
didn't say much in the lady's presence, but when the two were in the
open air, facing toward the center of the town, he divulged a good deal
that surprised Barney.

"You are from Acredale, young man. I lived there when I was younger than
I am now. My name? People call me a good many names. I don't mind at
all, so that I have rum enough and a bed and a bite to eat. No man can
have more than that, my boy. I am plain Dick Jones now. It's an easy
name, and plenty of the same in the land; and if I should die suddenly
there would be lots o' folks to feel sorry, eh? But as you are from
Acredale I don't mind telling you that it is Elisha Boone that foots the
bill. Butler is a friend of Boone's, and he has given me authority to
summon all the troops within reach to my aid. My business is to carry
young Wes Boone to Fort Monroe. Butler doesn't know that. He thinks I am
spying Jeff Davis and piping for the prisoners. He didn't say that he
wanted me to kill Davis, but if we could carry him to Fort Monroe, my
boy, there'd be about a million dollars swag to divide! How does that
strike you?"

"It doesn't strike me at all. I think it is for the interest of the
Union that Davis should be where he is. He is vain, arrogant, silly, and
dull. He will alone wreck the rebel cause if he is given time. There
couldn't be a greater misfortune for the North than to have Davis
displaced by some one of real ability, such as Stephens, Lee, Benjamin,
Mason, Breckenridge, or, in fact, any of the men identified with
secession."

"You surprise me, my son. Still, admitting all you say, the men who
should surprise the North some fine morning with a present of Jeff Davis
on their breakfast-plates, wouldn't be without honor, to say nothing of
promotion and profit"

"Oh, if we can carry Jeff off without compromising the safety of the
prisoners, I'll join you heartily. But first of all we must
rescue them."

"Unquestionably; now, here's the programme: Butler's forces will be
within gunshot of Magruder's lines on Warwick Creek Thursday--that's
three days from now. The prisoners will be out of the sewer Wednesday
after midnight. You know the roads eastward. You will lead them to the
swamps near Williamsburg. There we will have boats to take part down the
river; the rest will make through the swamps under my lead. I have been
spying out the land for a week. At a place called Rosedale we pick up
young Boone, who is really the object of my journey. I couldn't find him
for weeks, and inquired of all the prisoners. Mrs. Lanview finally put
me on the track, and I saw Wes Boone as I came up here. He thought the
chances were better with a big party than alone. I saw him again
yesterday, and he told me that Davis and Lee, his chief of staff, were
to be at a party in the Rosedale house on Thursday next. Now, we can
pick up Davis just as well as Boone. There is the whole plan."

"Oh, that's a different matter. Davis will not be near the city, and his
keeping will not add to our danger. I see no reason why we shouldn't
grab him. Heavens, what a sensation it will make! We shall be the wonder
of the North--we shall he like the men that discovered Andre and
Arnold--Paulding and--and"--but here Barney's historical facts came to
an end--"we shall be famous for--forever!"

"For a week, my son; wonders don't live long in these fast days. For a
week the North will glorify us; then, if they find that we voted for
Douglas, as I did, they will say we had some sinister design in bringing
Davis North, and likely send us to Fort Lafayette."

Barney stopped dead; they had come under a gas-lamp between Grace and
Franklin Streets. He looked at the man. He was quite sober. His eyes
answered the young man's indignant protesting glance, openly,
unshrinkingly, humorously.

"I should be sorry to think that, Mr. Jones."

"Well, wait. When you get North you will see a mighty change in things.
Sentiment, my boy, follows the main chance. It's money, my boy, money.
Enough money would have made Judas respectable; he was fool enough to
put his price too low."

"Ugh!--you almost make me hate the North! Who can have heart to fight
for such heartless traffickers?"

"The North doesn't ask your heart. It has counted the cost, and finds
that it can pay a million of men thirteen dollars a month for three
years, and still make a good thing out of it--that's about the breadth
of it. Here's an oasis in the desert of darkness. Come and have
a drink?"

But Barney--not caring for a drink, the cynic--gave him his address,
and, dreadfully cast down in spirit, the eager partisan moped up the
long hill homeward. The next day Mrs. Lanview gave him the details of
the meditated escape. There were only sixty or a hundred in position to
avail themselves of the subterranean way that had been toilsomely dug,
by a few devoted spirits, with tools casually dropped among them by the
guileless Veronica during her daily visits. The plotters counted on at
least six hours' start before discovery. The guards were not to be
disturbed, and the evasion would not be known until eight o'clock, when
the miserable breakfast ration was distributed.

Of that amazing-exploit, the digging through twenty solid feet of earth
and stone, I do not propose to tell. It is to be found in the journals
of the day: it is contained in the hundred pathetic narratives of the
men who took part. It has nothing to do with this history beyond the use
made of it to mislead the ingenious Barney, and in the end complicate
the careers of those in whom we are interested. Suffice it, therefore,
to say that in the dim morning mist, as arranged, a shadowy host emerged
on the river-bottom, now dry and footable; that each man, as he crawled
from the pit, was directed into the thick willows bordering the banks;
that when six score or more had clambered out they obeyed a whispered
command, for which Veronica had prepared them, and noiselessly, in
shadowy single file, they followed the bed of the stream, even where the
water flowed deep and dangerous, until they came to the gentle slopes of
Church Hill. Then, under guidance of Barney, those who were wise
followed swiftly down the river-road until daylight, when they hid in
the dim recesses of the white-oak swamps, where they lay concealed many
hours. As night fell they faced hopefully forward down the Williamsburg
road, until a flaming wave in the air admonished them to strike to the
right, and they plunged into the pathless swamps of the Chickahominy.
Here they were secure. No force able to cope with them could enter; no
force at the command of Magruder could surround them. But Barney's
guiding hand was now replaced by another. Jones had appeared, and with
him men bearing Butler's commission. The prisoners of Libby set up a
defiant cheer. They were once more under the flag. Father Abraham was
again their commander.

There were sedate, fatherly men among these rescued bands. There were
men with gray hairs and sober behavior; men who could bow meekly under
the chastening rod; but the antics of the juvenile group, in which we
are mainly interested, were grave and decorous compared with the
abandoned, delirious joy of these grave men as they reached the recesses
of a swamp that denied admission to all save practiced explorers. Why,
here they could subsist for weeks! The rebels might spy them, might
surround them, but they need not starve--the buds were food, the bushes
refreshment, the pellucid pools drink and life. Barney stared in
speechless amazement at the unseemly gambols of the motley mass.

Delirium! it was a mild term for the embracing, the prancing, the
Carmagnole-like ecstasy of the half-clad madmen running amuck in the
almost unendurable joy of liberation. Barney knew that this condition of
things would never do. All who bore commissions in the army were
selected from the men. The highest in rank, who proved to be a colonel,
was invested with the command, Barney serving as adjutant, and Jones as
guide. The rabble, having made a good meal from the spoil of a
sweet-potato patch, pushed forward through the fretwork of fern, rank
morass, and verdure, toward security. But the march was a snail's pace,
as may be imagined. The men, worn to skeletons by months of captivity,
insufficient food, and stinted exercise, were forced to halt often for
rest in such toilsome marching as the half-aquatic surface of the
swamp involved.

By Thursday noon they were still far from the river. Foragers were
detailed to procure food, and pending their return the wearied band sank
to the earth to rest. In less than two hours the predatory platoon
returned with a sybaritic store--chickens, young lamb, green corn,
onions. Only the stern command of the colonel suppressed a mighty cheer.
When the march was resumed the colonel led the main column south by
east. Jones, with Barney and a dozen men, struck due east. In answer to
Barney's surprised question, Jones informed him they were to pick up
"Wes" Boone by taking that route. Difficult as the way had been
heretofore, it now became laborious in the extreme for this smaller
band. The bottom was all under water, and before they had proceeded a
mile half the group were drenched. In many cases an imprudent plunger
was compelled to call a halt to rescue his shoes--that is, those who
were lucky enough to have shoes--from the deep mud, hidden by a fair
green surface of moss or tendrils. It was a wondrous journey to Barney,
The pages of Sindbad alone seemed to have a parallel for the awful
mysteries of that long, long flight through jungles of towering timber,
whose leaves and bark were as unfamiliar as Brazilian growth to the
troops of Pizarro or the Congo vegetation to the French pioneer. Jones
and his comrades saw nothing but the hardships of the march and the
delay of the painful _detours_ in the solemn glades. The direction was
kept by compass, many of the men having been supplied with a miniature
instrument by the prudent foresight of Mrs. Lanview, who was niggard of
neither time nor money in the cause she had at heart. In spite of every
effort a march so swift that it would have exhausted cavalry, Jones's
ranks did not reach the rendezvous until midnight. At about that hour
the exhausted fugitives came suddenly upon a wide, open plain, and far
below them, in the valley, a vision of light and life shone through
the dark.

"There, boys, we're at the end of our first stage. Unless I'm much
mistaken, that bit of merry-making yonder will cost the Confederacy
a chief."

"But is it certain that Davis is there?" asked the man Jones called
Moon, who seemed to be his intimate.

"Ah, that we will learn so soon as Nasmyd reports. We will give the
signal when we reach that fringe of wood yonder. It's back of the
grounds, separated from them by a hard piece of swamp and water.--Men,
you must follow now in single file, and when we get in the swamp, mind,
a single step out of line will cost you your lives, for, sucked into
that morass, wild horses can't pull you out."

Then, as they plunged anew in the gloomy deeps of swamp and brake, the
friendly lights were lost and the depressed wayfarers struggled on with
something of the feeling of a crew cast away at sea, who, thrown upon
the crest of a rising billow, catch a near glimpse of a great ship,
light and taut, riding serenely havenward to lose it the next in the
dire waste. Presently the melancholy bird-notes that had puzzled Jack in
the same vicinity days before broke out just in front of Barney, who was
clambering along, the third man from the head of the little column.
Again, after a long pause, the sweet, plaintive note was re-echoed from
a distance.

"Ah, all is well!" he heard Jones ejaculate triumphantly. "We are in
time and we are waited for.--Now, men, put all the heart that's in you
to the next half-hour's work. No danger, but just cool heads and
strong arms."

This good news was conveyed from man to man, and the toilsome movement
briskly accelerated under the inspiring watchword. Shortly afterward the
larger growth--cypress and oak--diminished, as the band straggled into
the open, starry night at the margin of what they could tell was water
by the croaking of frogs and plashing of night birds and reptiles. Then
the train was halted. Jones left Nasmyd in command and plunged into a
thick skirt of bushes. Now Barney, hot and dirty from the march, had
shot ahead when he heard the ripple of the water. He had taken off his
shoes to bathe his blistered and swollen feet, and sat quite still and
restful under the leafy sprays of an odorous bush that even in the dark
he knew to be honeysuckle.

"Well," he heard Jones cry in an exultant whisper, "we've done it. The
woman is a trump. There are a hundred nearly of the prisoners gone to
the boats. Now we are ready for Boone. Is Davis here?"

"Yes; he came over from Williamsburg at eight o'clock; they were
feasting when Clem came away a three or more ago."

"Any cavalry at the house?"

"A squadron; but they are ordered to be in saddle for their quarters at
midnight. There's the bugle for boots and saddles now."

"Yes; by the Eternal, what luck! Davis will sleep there."

"So Clem says; the state chamber has been prepared for him; all the rest
except Lee go back to Williamsburg."

"We couldn't have arranged it better if we had been given the ordering
of it. Are all the boats here?"

"Yes."

"And the negroes--how many have you?"

"I can't say. They've been dropping across in twos and threes since ten
o'clock. The curious thing is that the women are more taken with the
idea of fight than the men. We shall have enough--too many, I fear."

"We'll make them our safety, Jim, my boy; we'll divide them up, and, in
case of pursuit, send them in different directions to confuse
the troops."

"How many men are you going to take to the house?"

"Six, with you and me. It will be unsafe to take more, as the boats are
small. I will go back and select the men. You get the boats ready."

Barney hurried on his shoes, crawled through the bushes, and was in his
place when Jones presently appeared. The men, dead tired, were disposed
about on the ground asleep, not minding the damp grass or the heavy dew
that made the air fairly misty.

"Wake four of the men," Jones whispered, and when they were aroused he
said to a tall, reeling shadow, idly waiting orders:

"We'll be back in a half-hour, or an hour at the farthest. Let the men
sleep; they need it. Sleep yourself if you want to. Moon or I will come
to rouse you, and we will bring you plenty of bacon and hominy. Have no
fears if you hear movements just beyond you; there are a couple of
contrabands here who go with us. Here's a ration of tobacco for the men
when they wake, and a gallon of whisky, which you must serve out
gradually."

Revived by this stimulating news quite as much as by the whisky, Barney
and his three comrades followed Jones to the boats. There were four--the
dug-outs we saw Jack manoeuvring in the same waters a few nights before.
A negro sat silent, shadowy in each, and, when Jones gave the word, "Let
drive!" the barks shot through the waters, propelled by the single
scull, as swiftly as an Indian canoe. In a few moments all debarked on
the grassy knoll behind the black line of hedge. Jones made straight for
the high doorway, and inserting a key it was noiselessly opened.

"Men," he whispered, "no names must be used in any case. I'm number one,
Jim here is number two, Moore number three, and so on. Each one remember
his number. Clem will remain here with number six to guard the gate. All
the rest follow me."

Two negroes joined the party that stole forward through the rose-field
to the negro quarters. All was silent. As they reached the great kitchen
behind the house and connected with it by a trellised pavilion, only an
occasional light could be seen in the house. All were apparently there.
The ball had ended. Leaving Barney in charge of the rest, Jones and
Number Two crept along the trellis toward the house and soon disappeared
around the southern corner. Jones presently returned and said,
exultingly:

"The cavalry is gone; we have nothing to fear.--Plato, you go with
Number Two to the stables and bring the horses out; hold six and send
the rest scattering in the fields, so that in case of anybody's being in
the mind to follow hell have to use his legs, and we can beat them at
that game. Where are the ropes?" he asked the black man left in
the group.

"In de kitchen, massa."

"Get them!"

"Must I go alone, massa?"

"That's a fact.--There, Moore, you go with the boy--don't be a minute."

Barney followed the sable marauder through the grounds to the rear of
the trellis, and crept with him through a window which stood open. The
kitchen was dark, but the negro seemed perfectly familiar with the
place. He made directly for a dark panel in the northern wall, opened a
cupboard-door, knelt down and began to grope among bottles, boxes, and
what not that housewives gather in such receptacles.

"Oh, de lor'! dey ain't no rope! It's done gone!" "Have you a match?"
Barney asked.

"No, massa, but dey is some yondah."

"Find them."

The boy crept cautiously in the direction of the passage leading into
the house; he fumbled about, an age, as it seemed to the impatient
Barney, and at last uttered an exclamation:

"Got 'em?"

"No, massa, but Ise suah deys kep dar."

"Take my hand and lead me."

"It's molasses, massa, and Ise all stickem," the voice in the dark
whispered, delightedly, and Barney could see a double row of glistening
white ivory in the dim light that came through the window. He came
nearer the clumsy wight, and saw that it was a pan of batter the cook
had left on the table, probably the morning griddle-cakes. The negro was
a mass of white, pasty glue, and knelt on the floor, licking his hands
passively.

"Where are the matches?"

"Under de clock, in a tin safe, massa--right da."

Barney groped angrily about the table, on the clock-shelf, knocking down
a tin dish, that fell with the clatter of a bursting magazine in the
dense stillness of the night. Both drew back in shadow, waiting with
heart-beats that sounded in their ears like tramping horses on thick
sward. The clamor of rushing steeds in the lane suddenly drowned this; a
loud, joyous whinny sounded in the very kitchen it seemed, and there was
a rush houseward past the pantry as of a troop of cavalry. Then a
blood-curdling outcry of voices, then shots. Barney, leaving the negro
writhing in convulsions under the table, darted to the window--to the
rendezvous. It was deserted.




CHAPTER XIX.

"HE EITHER FEARS HIS FATE TOO MUCH."


When Vincent visited the stables on the morning of that
eagerly-looked-for Thursday, he found three of the horses clammy with
perspiration and giving every sign of having been ridden! The awkward
and evasive answers of the stablemen would not have been enough for any
other than a man preoccupied by love. When Rosa went to the kitchen, if
her head had not been taken up with the love in her heart, she must
certainly have remarked that the stores of food prepared for the
household were curiously diminished and the kitchen girls unwontedly
reserved. Indeed, in any other condition than that in which the family
now found themselves, they must have remarked a singular change in the
black brigade in kitchen and garden. But, preocupied each with a
different interest, as well as the preparation for the President's
_fete_, the Atterburys remarked nothing sinister in the distracted
conduct of their servants, and had only a vague feeling that the great
event had in some sort paralyzed their wonted noisy activities and
repressed their usual chatter. Kate's uneasiness and restless vagaries,
her disjointed talk and half-guilty evasions, would have been remarked
by her prepossessed hosts; while Wesley's shifting and moody silence
would have warned his comrades that he was suffering the pangs of an
evil done or meditated. Precursive signs like these--and much more,
which need not be dwelt on--the kind hosts of Rosedale made no note of.
But when Vincent opened the mail-bag--brought by an orderly from
Williamsburg every morning, the first surprise and shock of the day was
felt--though in varying degrees by all the diverse inmates of the house.

"Hah! glory to the Lord of hosts!" the exultant reader cried, as he
passed to his mother a large official envelope at the breakfast-table.

"I'm ordered to the field." he cried, as Jack looked inquiringly; "I'm
to set out to-night and report for duty with General Johnston to-morrow
at Manassas. No more loitering in my lady's bower; Jack, my boy, the
carpet will be clear for your knightly pranks after to-night."

"If it were Aladdin's magic rug, I should caper nimbly enough. I warrant
you."

"What would you wish--if it were under your feet, with its slaves at
your command?"

"I should whisk you all off--North--instanter."

"Ingrate!--plunge us into the chilly blasts of the North, in return for
our glorious Southern sun? Fie, Jack! I'm surprised at such selfish
ingratitude. We expected better things of our prisoners," Mrs. Atterbury
murmured, and affected a reproving frown at the culprit, as she handed
her son back the order, with a stilled sigh.

"The sun of the South is not the sun of York to us, you know; all the
clouds that lower on our house are doubly darkened by this Southern sun;
even the warmth of Rosedale hearts can not make up for our eclipsed
Northern star," Jack said, sadly, with a wistful look at the rival
warrior reading with sparkling eyes the instructions accompanying the
order to march.

"Since Vincent is going so far northward, I think it will be a good time
for us to go home," Mrs. Sprague began, tentatively.

"Oh--no--no! Oh, we could never think of such a thing," Rosa
cried--"could we, mamma?"

"Why should you go?" Mrs. Atterbury asked. "Until Jack is exchanged,
you've certainly no duty in the North so important as watching over this
headstrong fellow. We can't think of your going--unless you are weary
of us."

"O Mrs. Atterbury, pray don't put it in that way! You know better. Our
visit here has been perfect. But you can understand my anxiety to be at
home; to be where I can aid my son's release. I have been anxious for
some time to broach the subject, but I saw that our going would be a
trouble to you; now, since fortune offers this chance, we must seize
it--that is, those of us who feel it a duty to go"; and she looked
meaningly at Merry and her daughter.

"Nonsense! You are hostages for Vincent, in case he is captured, as long
as you are here; I can't let you go--under the laws of war--I can not.
Can I, Vincent?"

Vincent looked at Jack solemnly, but made no answer.

"Mamma is quite right. While you are with us no harm can come to
Vincent; for, if he should be taken prisoner, we can threaten the Yankee
Government to put you to torture unless he is well treated," Rosa
interrupted, reassuringly.

"We should be far more aid and comfort to Vincent if we were in the
North than we could be here. If he were taken prisoner and wounded, we
could return him the kindness we have received here. In any event, we
could lessen the hardships of prison life."

"Oh, you would have to minister to a mind diseased, if such a fate
should befall me!" Vincent cried, sentimentally; with a glance into
Olympia's eyes, which met his at the moment. Both blushed; and Olympia,
to relieve the embarrassment, said, decisively:

"Mamma is right. Jack must have his family on the ground, to watch over
his interests. I am sure there is some underhand work responsible for
this long delay in his case, for I saw by _The Whig_, last week, that
exchanges of prisoners had been made; I think that--" But, suddenly
remembering the presence of Kate and Wesley, she did not finish the
thought, which implied a belief in the intervention of the elder
Boone--to Jack's detriment. In the end--when the two mothers talked the
matter over--Mrs. Sprague carried the point. She convinced Mrs.
Atterbury that there was danger to Jack in a longer stay of his family
in the Confederate lines. Vague reports had already reached them from
Acredale of the suspicious hostility in which the Democrats were held
after Bull Run. The Northern papers, which came through the lines quite
regularly, left no doubt that Democratic leanings were universally
interpreted in the North as evidences of rebel sympathy, if not
partisanship. Such a charge, as things stood, would be fatal to Jack;
and the mother's duty was plain. She had friends in Washington, once
powerful, who could stand between her son and calumny--perhaps more
serious danger--when she was present in person to explain his conduct.
If she could not at once secure his exchange, she could save him from
compromise in the present inflammable and capricious state of the public
mind. Understanding this, and the enmity of Boone, Mrs. Atterbury not
only made no further objection, but acknowledged the urgent necessity of
the mother's presence in the North. The idle life of Rosedale had grown
unbearably irksome to Merry, too.

"I feel as if I were a rebel," she confided to Mrs. Sprague in the
evening talks, when the piano sounded and the young people were making
the hours pass in gayety. "It's a sin for us to laugh and be contented
here, when our friends are bearing the burdens of war. I shall be
ashamed to show my face in Acredale. Oh, I wish I could carry a musket!"

"You might carry a canteen, my dear. I believe the regiments take out
_vivandieres_--there would be an outlet for your warlike emotions," Mrs.
Sprague said, with the purpose of cheering the unhappy spinster.

"Ah, no; I must not give encouragement to that dreadful Richard. But we
shall go now, thank Heaven, and it will comfort my sisters to have the
boy back on Northern soil, even if he persists in being a soldier."

She had a long talk with Jack on the subject. That tempest-tossed knight
convinced her that it would only incite the boy to more unruliness to
persist in his quitting the army, or to urge him northward now, before
an exchange was properly arranged. Indeed, he was a prisoner--taken in
battle--though his name did not appear on the lists. So Vincent's sudden
going was welcomed as a stroke of good fortune. The Atterburys,
understanding the natural feelings of the family, made only perfunctory
opposition. Olympia and Kate were to remain until their brothers' fates
were decided. Vincent, who had been for weeks wildly impatient to return
to the field, was divided in mind now--by joy and despair. He had put
off and put off a last appeal to Olympia. He had not had an opportunity,
or rather had too much opportunity--and had, from day to day, deferred
the longed-for yet dreaded decision. When ready to speak, prudence
whispered that it would be better to leave the question open until it
should come up of itself. She would learn every day to know him better
in his own home, where all the artificialities of life are stripped from
a man, by the concurrent abrasions of family love and domestic
_devoirs_. She would see that, however unworthy of her love he might
have seemed in the old boyish days at Acredale, now he could be a man
when manliness was demanded; that he could be patient, reticent, humble
in the trials her caprice or coquetry put upon him. She had, it seemed
to him, deepened and broadened the current of his love during these
blissful weeks of waiting. Her very reserve, under the new conditions
surrounding her, had made more luminous the beauty of her heart and
mind. She was no longer the airy, capricious Olympia of his college
days. The pensive gravity of misfortune and premature responsibility had
ennobled and made more tangible the traits that had won him in her
Northern home. She had not avoided him during these weeks of purifying
probation, as he feared she would. Of late--Jack's state being
secure--she had revived much of the old vivacity, and deepened the
thrall that held him.

But now the merry-making season which had opened before them was at an
end. The madrigals that welled up in his soft heart must sing themselves
in the silence of the night, in the camp yonder, with no ears to
comprehend, no heart to melt to them. He should probably not get a
chance to see her again during the conflict. How long? Perhaps a
year--for it would take two campaigns, as the rebel leaders reckoned, to
convince the North that the Confederacy was unconquerable! And what
might not happen during those momentous months? Perhaps Jack's
death?--and then they would be divided as by fire--or, if the conflict
resulted victoriously for the South, as he knew it must, he foresaw that
the soldier of the conquering army would not be received as a wooer in
the family of the defeated. He knew her so well! She would, in the very
pride of outraged patriotism, give her love to one of the defeated,
rather than add to the triumphs of the hated South. She had strong
convictions on the war. She hated slavery, and she could not be made to
see that the South was warring for liberty, not to sustain slavery.
These thoughts ran through Vincent's troubled mind as his mother
directed the preparations for the _fete_ of the President.

Kate, Jack, and Dick were pressed into the service of decorating the
apartments. Olympia left the room with her mother to advise and assist
in making ready for the journey North; and Vincent, aiding his mother
with a sadly divided mind, kept furtive watch on the hallway. She held
him hours in suspense, he thought, almost wrathfully, of deliberate
purpose; for she must have read in his eyes that he wanted to talk with
her. The artless Dick finally gave him a chance.

"I say, Vint, get Polly to show you the roses needed for the tables;
I'll be with you by-and-by to cut the ferns. Do you think you could make
yourself of that much use? You're not worth a straw here"

"Send for Miss Polly and I'll do my best," Vincent said, with a gulp, to
conceal his joy. She appeared presently; and, as they were passing out
of the door, Rosa cried, imperiously:

"Oh, yes, Vint, we need ever so much honeysuckle; you know where it
hangs thickest--in the Owl's Glen. Olympia will like to see that--the
haunt of her favorite bird"; and the busy little maid laughed cheerily,
like a disordered goddess, intoxicated by the exhaling odors of the
floral chaos.

"_En route_ for Roumelia, then," Vincent cried in military cadence, as
the florists set out. Roumelia was the name Jack had given the
rose-lands near the stream, in fanciful allusion to the Turkish province
of flowers. Halting at the gardener's cottage, Vincent procured an
immense pair of shears, like a double rapier in size, and, bidding the
man follow to gather the blossoms, he pushed into the blooming vineyard.

"With such an instrument I should say it was the golden fleece you were
after," Olympia cried, as he reached her side, "though I believe Jason
didn't do the shearing."

"No, the powers of air worked for him, and he found his quest ready to
his hand."

"I'm sure the powers of air have not denied you; look at those radiant
ranks of blossoms bending to be gathered."

"Ah, yes, beauty stoops sometimes to welcome the trembling hand of the
suitor."

"Your hand is rather unsteady--infirm of purpose; give me the blades."
She took them laughingly, and snipped the green stems rapidly and
dexterously.

"Yes, I believe men are infirm in moral purposes, as compared to women.
It is only in the brutalities of life that men are decisive."

"Do you mean that women approach the trials of life less thinkingly and
act less rationally than men?"

"Yes and no. The daring too much is always before a man; the daring too
little is, I think, the only trouble a woman has."

"Oh, that is a large question, involving too much mental strain in a
garden of roses, where the senses sleep and one is content with mere
breath and the faintest motion."

"There are enough roses; now we will go for the wild smilax and
honeysuckle; perhaps the cool air of the pools will restore your mental
activities."

They left the dismembered roses scattered in fragrant heaps on the
shaded path and walked slowly toward the dense hedge.

"What a perfect fortress this green wall makes of the gardens!" Olympia
said, glancing around the great square, where the solid green wall could
be seen running up much higher than their heads.

"Yes, as I said the other day, it would take hard work for an invading
force to get at the house unless traitors within gave up the gates. This
one," he added, unlocking a massive oak door, crossed with thick planks
and studded with iron bolts, "alone admits from the creek and swamp. It
is locked all the time; no one has the key except the gardener, who
delivers it to mamma every night."

"A feudal demesne; it takes one back to the so-called days of chivalry."

"Why do you say 'so-called'? To me they are the delight of the
past--when men went to battle for the smile of the women they loved,
when knights rode the world over in search of adventure, and my lady, in
her donjon, listened with pleasure to the lover's roundelay. Ah, it was
a perfect life, an enchanting time. We are living in a coarse, brutal
age; chivalry was the creed of civilization, the knights the priesthood
of the higher life."

"There's the Southerner through and through in that sentimentality. To
me chivalry means all that is narrow, cruel, and rapacious in man. The
philandering knights were sensual boobies, the simpering dames soulless
wantons. Life meant simply the rule of the strong, the slaughter of the
weak. Servitude was its law and robbery its methods. Have you ever
traveled in out-of-the-way places in Germany, Austria, or Italy?"

"No, I've never been abroad."

"You would know better what I mean if you had seen the monstrous relics
of the age you admire. The few ruled the many; the knights were simply a
brotherhood of blood and rapine; men were slaves, women were worse. The
bravest were as unlettered as your body-servant, the most beautiful
dames as termagant as Penelope the cook. At the table men and women ate
from a common dish, without forks or spoons. Men guzzled gallons of
unfermented wine. A bath was unknown. Cleanliness was as unpracticed as
Islamism in New York. Ugh! anything but chivalry for me."

"But surely the great lords were not what you represent. They were
gentle born, gentle bred. They could not be robbers; they lived from
great estates."

"They were the 'Knights of St. Nicholas,' which, in the slang of the
middle ages, meant what they call in the West road agents; indeed, plain
highwaymen they were called in England in Bacon's day."

Vincent bent over discomfited, and held the little shallop until Olympia
was seated, and then pushed off into the murky stream.

"Do you see those streamers of loveliness waving welcome to you, fair
damsel--Nature knows its kind?"

"That's one word for me and one for yourself," she cried, seizing the
dainty pink sprays that now trailed over her head and shoulders as the
boat glided along the fringe of hushes supporting the clinging vines.

"Oh, no, Olympia; I can't speak even one word for myself. I have been
trembling to do it this six weeks, but your eye had none of the
invitation these starry blossoms offer us. I am going to say now,
Olympia, what I have to say--for after to-day there will be no chance;
what has been on my mind you have long known. You know that I love you;
how much I love you, how impossible it is to think of life without you,
I dare not venture to say to you, for you distrust our Southern
exaggeration. But I do love you; ah, my God! all the world else--my
mother, my sister, my duty seem nothing compared to the one passionate
hope in my breast. Do you believe me, Olympia--do you doubt me?"

"Far from it, Vincent--dear Vincent--no--no--sit where you are and
listen to me--" She was deeply moved, and the lover in his heart cursed
the luckless veils of blossom that she apparently, without design, drew
before her face. "I do believe all you say; I knew it before you said
it. But you remember we went over this very same ground before. Since
then, it is true, you have been the means of saving us much misery; how
much I hardly dare think of when I look back to that dreadful day, when
mamma lay in the fever of coming disease and the hopelessness of
despair. All I can say, dear, dear Vincent, is what I said before. Wait
until thine and mine are no longer at war. Wait until one flag
covers us--"

"But that can never be!"

"Wait! I have faith that it will be!"

"If one flag should cover us--my flag--would you--would you--?"

"Ah, Vincent! don't ask me; don't force me to say something thing that
will make you unhappy, since I don't know my own mind well enough yet to
answer as you wish me to answer--"

"But you can tell me now whether you love me, or, at least, whether
there is any one you love more?"

"I don't think I love you. I know, however, that I think no more of any
one else than I think of you; pray, let that suffice."

"But how cruel that is, Olympia! It is as much, as to say that you won't
wait and see whether you may meet some one that you can be surer of than
you are of me?"

"I must distress you whatever I say, Vincent! Frankly, I don't think you
can decide just now whether your heart is really engaged. I think you do
not know me as a man should knows the woman he makes his wife. I am
certain I do not know you. If you had been born and bred in the North, I
should have no difficulty in deciding; but your ways are so different
here: women are accorded so much before marriage, and made so little of
a man's life after marriage, that I shrink from a promise which, if
lightly or inconsiderately given, would bring the last misery a woman
can confront."

"What, Olympia! you think Southern men do not hold marriage to be
sacred?"

"I think that the Southern man has a good deal of the knight you spoke
of in him, and, like the Frenchman, marries inconsiderately, and does
penance in infidelity, at least to the form, if not the fact, of the
relation."

"O Olympia! where do you get such repulsive ideas of us; who has been
traducing us to you?"

"I judge from the Southern men I have seen North; pardon me, Vincent, I
do not see how it can be otherwise in a society based upon human
servitude. To live on the labors of a helot people blunts the finer
sensibilities of men and women alike; when you can look unshrinkingly at
the separation of husband and wife on the auction-block, when you can
see innocent children taken from their mothers and sold into eternal
separation, I think it is not unnatural in me to fear that a woman with
my convictions would not be happy mated with a Southerner. All this is
cruel, I fear you will think, but it would be crueller for me to
encourage a love that, under present circumstances, would bring misery
to both of us."

"You are an abolitionist?"

"Yes; every right-thinking person in the North is an abolitionist to
this extent; we want the South to take the remedy into its own hands, to
free its slaves voluntarily; the radical abolitionists prefer a violent
means. That I do not seek or did not; but now, Vincent, it is bound
to come."

"And, if it should come, what would you answer to my question?"

"Here is a white rose: I picked it with my hand, and, you see, a drop of
my blood is on it; when you can give me a rose with a drop of your blood
on it as free from taint as the stain mine makes, I shall have an answer
that will not be unworthy your waiting for!"

"Unworthy! I don't understand you. Surely, you don't think me a
profligate?"

"When the time comes that no human being acknowledges your ownership,
perhaps you may receive a voluntary bond-maid, bound to you by stronger
ties than the chattel of the slave."

"But you love me, then, Olympia?"

"I can not love where I do not reverence."

"But it is not my fault that slaves are my inheritance!"

"It will be your fault if they are your support when you are your own
master."

"You love an idea better than you love a man who would die for you!"

"I love manliness and the sense of right, which is called duty, better
than I love a man who is blind to the first impulse of real manhood--"

"Would you ask a Jew to give up his synagogue to gain your hand?"

"The synagogue is the temple of a creed as divine as my own, and the
faith of the man I loved would never swerve me in accepting or
refusing him."

"We of the South believe slavery a divine institution--that is, first
established by the fathers!"

"The tribes in the Fiji Islands believe man-eating an ordinance of the
gods!"

"Well, this sort of discussion leads to nothing," Vincent said,
ruefully. "The world is well lost for the woman one loves, when I come
to you shorn of my world!"

"Ah! then, Vincent, you will find another!"

He drew her hand from the clinging vines and kissed it.

"I am very happy. I shall lose my world with a very light heart."

"The world is a very tough brier; we sometimes bring it closer, when its
thorns prick us more painfully in the struggles to cast it off."

"Then I'll cut the brambles, and not risk tearing my flesh!"

"That's the soldier's way--the heroic way; but wait for the future; I am
young and you are not old."

Vincent's gayety when they returned to the drawing-room attracted the
observant Dick, and he slyly whispered to the warrior, "Been practicing
the Roman strategy with the Sabines?"

"No, I've been at the Temple of Minerva and taken a pledge to hold my
tongue."

"Ah! the goddess of the owls; but, as they see light only in darkness, I
fear you groped in blackness."

The whole household were to meet President Davis and his party in
Williamsburg, assist at the review, and get back with the distinguished
guests in time for a state dinner. Merry and Mrs. Sprague were reluctant
to go, but they feared a refusal would be misunderstood. Poor Merry was
very tearful and disconsolate at the thought of leaving Dick, but she
strove heroically to hide her grief when the cavalcade set out, the
elder ladies driving, the young people mounted. The ancient capital of
Virginia was aflame with the new rebel bunting. President Davis, with
Generals Lee and Magruder, were in place on the pretty green before the
old colonial college edifice when the Rosedale people came up. Davis
saluted Mrs. Atterbury with cordial urbanity; but, as the troops were
already in column, there was only time for hasty presentation of the
strangers.

Jack watched the rather piebald pageant with absorbed interest. The
infantry marched wretchedly. The arms were as varied as the uniforms,
and the artillery seemed a relic of Jackson's time. But the cavalry was
superb. Never had he seen such splendid ranks, such noble horses. At
sight of the tall, elegant figure of the President, the troops broke
into the peculiar shrill cheer that afterward became a sound of wonder,
almost terror, to unaccustomed Northern ears. It was a mingling of the
boyish treble of college cries and the menacing shriek of the wild-cat.
Jack was secretly very much delighted with the review. More than half
the rank and file were mere boys; and he could see that they were
unruly, almost to point-blank disregard of their officers commands, or
the prescriptions of the manual. It would take short work for the
disciplined hosts the new Northern general was training, to sweep such
chaff from the field of war. Vincent saw something of this in his
comrade's eye, and a good deal nettled himself by the slovenly march and
humorous abandon of the men, he said:

"You must remember, Jack, our army is made up of gentlemen's sons; the
gentry of the South are all in arms, and we can't at once reduce them to
the mere machines a more heterogeneous soldiery can be made. The men who
won Manassas passed in review a day or two before the battle, and they
made the same impression upon me--upon Beauregard himself--that I see
these men have made on you. Depend upon it, in a fight they will be good
soldiers."

"Let me have the poor comfort of underrating my enemy, the thing above
all others that a wise man shuns and a fool indulges."

"Oh, on that theory revile them if you like."

"No, indeed; I'm far from reviling them. The cavalry is magnificent. I
don't think we have a regiment in our army that can compare with that
brigade. Who commands it?"

"Jeb Stuart--the Murat of the South," Vincent said, proudly. "I'm going
to tell the President what you said of the brigade; you know he is
passionately fond of the army, and really wanted to be the
commander-in-chief, when they made him President at Montgomery."

At sunset the President and General Lee entered the carriage with Mrs.
Atterbury and Mrs. Sprague, Merry driving in a phaeton with Kate, who
didn't enjoy so long a ride on the horse.

"I'm glad we've got such important hostages as yourself and son," Davis
said gallantly to Mrs. Sprague, as the carriage passed out of the clamor
of acclamation the crowd set up. "I knew the Senator, your husband,
intimately. If he had lived, I doubt whether we should have been driven
out of the Union. He was, in my mind, one of the most prudent statesmen
that came from the North to Congress."

"He certainly never would have consented to break up the Union," Mrs.
Sprague said, in embarrassment.

"Nor should I, madam, if there had been any further security in it. The
truth is, there was nothing left for us but to go out or be kicked out.
The leaders of the Abolition party long ago proclaimed that. However,
war settles all such problems. When it is settled by the sword we shall
be satisfied."

Mrs. Atterbury changed the conversation by asking how Mrs. Davis liked
Richmond.

"Oh, she has been treated royally by the people there. I declare
Richmond is as Southern a city as Charleston. I have been agreeably
surprised by the absolute unanimity of gentle and simple in the cause.
My wife receives a clothes-basketful of letters every morning from the
mothers of the Confederacy proffering time, money, and service wherever
she can suggest anything for them to do. I propose later on establishing
an order something like the Golden Fleece, which shall confer a certain
social precedence upon the wearers. I have thousands of letters on the
subject, and as the society of the South is, as a matter of fact, a
society of gentle-folk--for the most part lineally descended from the
nobility of older countries--I think it proper and right that lineage
should have certain acknowledged advantages in the new commonwealth. But
I propose to go further, and institute an order of something like
nobility for women--who have thus far given us great help and
encouragement. Indeed, there are many in the Congress--a dozen Senators
I could name--who think that we ought to make our regime entirely
different from the North, and that we should adopt a monarchical form--"

"I'm sure, I think we should," Mrs. Atterbury exclaimed, delightedly.
"We are really as unlike the Northern people as the French or
the Germans."

"The strongest argument for declaring the Confederacy an empire is the
one that weighed with Napoleon I. We should at one stroke secure the
alliance of all the monarchies. They have never looked with favor on the
experiment of a powerful republic over here, and it is almost certain
they would befriend us for transforming this mighty infant state into an
empire. However, that is for future action. Our agents abroad have sent
us full reports on the matter."

"I doubt the wisdom of ever hinting such a thing," General Lee said,
gravely. "We must show that we are able to act independently in
selecting our form of government. I doubt very much whether the masses
would listen favorably to an empire established by foreign aid."

"Possibly, general, possibly. As I said before, there will be time
enough for that when, like Napoleon, we have made our armies the masters
of this continent. Then, with boundaries embracing Mexico, Canada, and
the Western States--for they can never exist independent of us--we can
choose empire, republic, or a Venetian oligarchy."

As they came in sight of Rosedale, Davis stood up in the carriage to get
a better view of the landscape, which showed swift alternations of dense
thickets and wood and rolling acres of rich crops.

"What a State Virginia is!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "It has the
climate and soil to support half of Europe. Mother of Presidents in the
past, it will be the granary and magazine of the Confederacy in ten
years. My own State, Mississippi, is rich in land, but the climate is
hard for the stranger. It enervates the European at first. But we are an
agricultural people, or rather we give our energies to our staple,
cotton; that is to be the chief treasure of the Confederacy."

Dinner was ready for the table when the guests came from their rooms.
Davis excused his lack of ceremonial dress, saying pleasantly:

"I am something of a soldier, you know, and travel with a light train.
Lee, there, has the advantage of me. A soldier's uniform is court
costume the world over."

"But you are the commander-in-chief, Mr. President. Don't you have a
uniform?"

"No. I am commander-in-chief only in law. Congress is really the
commander-in-chief. The man that assumes those duties can attend to them
alone. He is, of course, subject to the executive; but only in general
plans, rarely in details."

Davis was placed at Mrs. Atterbury's right, Mrs. Sprague at her left,
General Lee sat at Vincent's right, _vis-a-vis_ to Jack, who was lost in
prodigious admiration of the Socratic-like chieftain--Lee was as yet
unknown to all but a discriminating few in the Confederacy. He was as
tall as Davis fully six feet--but more rounded and symmetrical. He spoke
with great gravity, but seemed to enjoy the jests that the young people
found opportunities to indulge in, when it was seen that the President
devoted his talk exclusively to the hostess or Mrs. Sprague. Davis was a
good talker, and charmed the company with reminiscences of old times
in Congress.

"I don't remember Lincoln distinctly," he said, concluding a
reminiscence, "but I think he's the man that used to be so popular in
the House cloak-room, telling stories which were said to be
extremely droll."

"Mrs. Lincoln is in some sort kin to Mrs. Davis, isn't she?" Mrs.
Atterbury asked. "I have read it somewhere."

"Very distant. Mrs. Lincoln is of the Kentucky Tods, and they were in
some way kin of my wife's family, the Howells. Not enough to put on
mourning, if Mrs. Lincoln should become a widow."

"Is it true, Mr. President, that a society in the North has offered a
million dollars for your capture--abduction? I heard it in Williamsburg,
and saw an allusion to it in _The Examiner_ the other day."

"Oh, I'm sure I can't say. If the offer were authenticated, I should be
tempted to go and get the reward myself. With a million dollars I could
do a good deal more for the cause in the North than I can here, making
brigadiers and settling questions of precedence between Cabinet
ministers, judges, and Senators."

"Mr. President, give me an exchange North, and I will ascertain the
facts in the million-dollar offer and write you faithfully how to set
about getting the money," Jack said, very soberly, from his end of
the table.

"Ah! the Yankee spoke there--nothing if not a bargain. Sir, you deserve
your clearance papers, but I'm too good a friend of Mrs. Atterbury and
her daughter to bring about the loss of company that I am sure must be
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