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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crisis, Volume 6, by Winston Churchill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Crisis, Volume 6
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Release Date: October 19, 2004 [EBook #5393]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRISIS, VOLUME 6 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CRISIS
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+Volume 6.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCING A CAPITALIST
+
+A cordon of blue regiments surrounded the city at first from Carondelet
+to North St. Louis, like an open fan. The crowds liked best to go to
+Compton Heights, where the tents of the German citizen-soldiers were
+spread out like so many slices of white cake on the green beside the
+city's reservoir. Thence the eye stretched across the town, catching the
+dome of the Court House and the spire of St. John's. Away to the west, on
+the line of the Pacific railroad that led halfway across the state, was
+another camp. Then another, and another, on the circle of the fan, until
+the river was reached to the northward, far above the bend. Within was a
+peace that passed understanding,--the peace of martial law.
+
+Without the city, in the great state beyond, an irate governor had
+gathered his forces from the east and from the west. Letters came and
+went between Jefferson City and Jefferson Davis, their purport being that
+the Governor was to work out his own salvation, for a while at least.
+Young men of St. Louis, struck in a night by the fever of militarism,
+arose and went to Glencoe. Prying sergeants and commissioned officers,
+mostly of hated German extraction, thundered at the door of Colonel
+Carvel's house, and other houses, there--for Glencoe was a border town.
+They searched the place more than once from garret to cellar, muttered
+guttural oaths, and smelled of beer and sauerkraut, The haughty
+appearance of Miss Carvel did not awe them--they were blind to all manly
+sensations. The Colonel's house, alas, was one of many in Glencoe written
+down in red ink in a book at headquarters as a place toward which the
+feet of the young men strayed. Good evidence was handed in time and time
+again that the young men had come and gone, and red-faced commanding
+officers cursed indignant subalterns, and implied that Beauty had had a
+hand in it. Councils of war were held over the advisability of seizing
+Mr. Carvel's house at Glencoe, but proof was lacking until one rainy
+night in June a captain and ten men spurred up the drive and swung into a
+big circle around the house. The Captain took off his cavalry gauntlet
+and knocked at the door, more gently than usual. Miss Virginia was home
+so Jackson said. The Captain was given an audience more formal than one
+with the queen of Prussia could have been, Miss Carvel was infinitely
+more haughty than her Majesty. Was not the Captain hired to do a
+degrading service? Indeed, he thought so as he followed her about the
+house and he felt like the lowest of criminals as he opened a closet door
+or looked under a bed. He was a beast of the field, of the mire. How
+Virginia shrank from him if he had occasion to pass her! Her gown would
+have been defiled by his touch. And yet the Captain did not smell of
+beer, nor of sauerkraut; nor did he swear in any language. He did his
+duty apologetically, but he did it. He pulled a man (aged seventeen) out
+from under a great hoop skirt in a little closet, and the man had a
+pistol that refused its duty when snapped in the Captain's face. This was
+little Spencer Catherwood, just home from a military academy.
+
+Spencer was taken through the rain by the chagrined Captain to the
+headquarters, where he caused a little embarrassment. No damning evidence
+was discovered on his person, for the pistol had long since ceased to be
+a firearm. And so after a stiff lecture from the Colonel he was finally
+given back into the custody of his father. Despite the pickets, the young
+men filtered through daily,--or rather nightly. Presently some of them
+began to come back, gaunt and worn and tattered, among the grim cargoes
+that were landed by the thousands and tens of thousands on the levee. And
+they took them (oh, the pity of it!) they took them to Mr. Lynch's slave
+pen, turned into a Union prison of detention, where their fathers and
+grandfathers had been wont to send their disorderly and insubordinate
+niggers. They were packed away, as the miserable slaves had been, to
+taste something of the bitterness of the negro's lot. So came Bert
+Russell to welter in a low room whose walls gave out the stench of years.
+How you cooked for them, and schemed for them, and cried for them, you
+devoted women of the South! You spent the long hot summer in town, and
+every day you went with your baskets to Gratiot Street, where the
+infected old house stands, until--until one morning a lady walked out
+past the guard, and down the street. She was civilly detained at the
+corner, because she wore army boots. After that permits were issued. If
+you were a young lady of the proper principles in those days, you climbed
+a steep pair of stairs in the heat, and stood in line until it became
+your turn to be catechised by an indifferent young officer in blue who
+sat behind a table and smoked a horrid cigar. He had little time to be
+courteous. He was not to be dazzled by a bright gown or a pretty face; he
+was indifferent to a smile which would have won a savage. His duty was to
+look down into your heart, and extract therefrom the nefarious scheme you
+had made to set free the man you loved ere he could be sent north to
+Alton or Columbus. My dear, you wish to rescue him, to disguise him, send
+him south by way of Colonel Carvel's house at Glencoe. Then he will be
+killed. At least, he will have died for the South.
+
+First politics, and then war, and then more politics, in this our
+country. Your masterful politician obtains a regiment, and goes to war,
+sword in hand. He fights well, but he is still the politician. It was not
+a case merely of fighting for the Union, but first of getting permission
+to fight. Camp Jackson taken, and the prisoners exchanged south, Captain
+Lyon; who moved like a whirlwind, who loved the Union beyond his own
+life, was thrust down again. A mutual agreement was entered into between
+the Governor and the old Indian fighter in command of the Western
+Department, to respect each other. A trick for the Rebels. How Lyon
+chafed, and paced the Arsenal walks while he might have saved the state.
+Then two gentlemen went to Washington, and the next thing that happened
+was Brigadier General Lyon, Commander of the Department of the West.
+
+Would General Lyon confer with the Governor of Missouri? Yes, the General
+would give the Governor a safe-conduct into St. Louis, but his Excellency
+must come to the General. His Excellency came, and the General deigned to
+go with the Union leader to the Planters House. Conference, five hours;
+result, a safe-conduct for the Governor back. And this is how General
+Lyon ended the talk. His words, generously preserved by a Confederate
+colonel who accompanied his Excellency, deserve to be writ in gold on the
+National Annals.
+
+"Rather than concede to the state of Missouri the right to demand that my
+Government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops
+into the state whenever it pleases; or move its troops at its own will
+into, out of, or through, the state; rather than concede to the state of
+Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in
+any matter, however unimportant, I would" (rising and pointing in turn to
+every one in the room) "see you, and you, and you, and you, and every
+man, woman, and child in this state, dead and buried." Then, turning to
+the Governor, he continued, "This means war. In an hour one of my
+officers will call for you and conduct you out of my lines."
+
+And thus, without another word, without an inclination of the head, he
+turned upon his heel and strode out of the room, rattling his spurs and
+clanking his sabre.
+
+It did mean war. In less than two months that indomitable leader was
+lying dead beside Wilson's Creek, among the oaks on Bloody Hill. What he
+would have been to this Union, had God spared him, we shall never know.
+He saved Missouri, and won respect and love from the brave men who fought
+against him.
+
+Those first fierce battles in the state! What prayers rose to heaven, and
+curses sank to hell, when the news of them came to the city by the river!
+Flags were made by loving fingers, and shirts and bandages. Trembling
+young ladies of Union sympathies presented colors to regiments on the
+Arsenal Green, or at Jefferson Barracks, or at Camp Benton to the
+northwest near the Fair Grounds. And then the regiments marched through
+the streets with bands playing that march to which the words of the
+Battle Hymn were set, and those bright ensigns snapping at the front;
+bright now, and new, and crimson. But soon to be stained a darker red,
+and rent into tatters, and finally brought back and talked over and cried
+over, and tenderly laid above an inscription in a glass case, to be
+revered by generations of Americans to confer What can stir the soul more
+than the sight of those old flags, standing in ranks like the veterans
+they are, whose duty has been nobly done? The blood of the color-sergeant
+is there, black now with age. But where are the tears of the sad women
+who stitched the red and the white and the blue together?
+
+The regiments marched through the streets and aboard the boats, and
+pushed off before a levee of waving handkerchiefs and nags. Then
+heart-breaking suspense. Later--much later, black headlines, and grim
+lists three columns long,--three columns of a blanket sheet! "The City of
+Alton has arrived with the following Union dead and wounded, and the
+following Confederate wounded (prisoners)." Why does the type run
+together?
+
+In a never-ceasing procession they steamed up the river; those calm boats
+which had been wont to carry the white cargoes of Commerce now bearing
+the red cargoes of war. And they bore away to new battlefields thousands
+of fresh-faced boys from Wisconsin and Michigan and Minnesota, gathered
+at Camp Benton. Some came back with their color gone and their red cheeks
+sallow and bearded and sunken. Others came not back at all.
+
+Stephen Brice, with a pain over his heart and a lump in his throat,
+walked on the pavement beside his old company, but his look avoided their
+faces. He wrung Richter's hand on the landing-stage. Richter was now a
+captain. The good German's eyes were filled as he said good-by.
+
+"You will come, too, my friend, when the country needs you," he said.
+"Now" (and he shrugged his shoulders), "now have we many with no cares to
+go. I have not even a father--" And he turned to Judge Whipple, who was
+standing by, holding out a bony hand.
+
+"God bless you, Carl," said the Judge And Carl could scarce believe his
+ears. He got aboard the boat, her decks already blue with troops, and as
+she backed out with her whistle screaming, the last objects he saw were
+the gaunt old man and the broad-shouldered young man side by side on the
+edge of the landing.
+
+Stephen's chest heaved, and as he walked back to the office with the
+Judge, he could not trust himself to speak. Back to the silent office
+where the shelves mocked them. The Judge closed the ground-glass door
+behind him, and Stephen sat until five o'clock over a book. No, it was
+not Whittlesey, but Hardee's "Tactics." He shut it with a slam, and went
+to Verandah Hall to drill recruits on a dusty floor,--narrow-chested
+citizens in suspenders, who knew not the first motion in right about
+face. For Stephen was an adjutant in the Home Guards--what was left of
+them.
+
+One we know of regarded the going of the troops and the coming of the
+wounded with an equanimity truly philosophical. When the regiments passed
+Carvel & Company on their way riverward to embark, Mr. Hopper did not
+often take the trouble to rise from his chair, nor was he ever known to
+go to the door to bid them Godspeed. This was all very well, because they
+were Union regiments. But Mr. Hopper did not contribute a horse, nor even
+a saddle-blanket, to the young men who went away secretly in the night,
+without fathers or mothers or sisters to wave at them. Mr. Hopper had
+better use for his money.
+
+One scorching afternoon in July Colonel Carvel came into the office, too
+hurried to remark the pain in honest Ephum's face as he watched his
+master. The sure signs of a harassed man were on the Colonel. Since May
+he had neglected his business affairs for others which he deemed public,
+and which were so mysterious that even Mr. Hopper could not get wind of
+them. These matters had taken the Colonel out of town. But now the
+necessity of a pass made that awkward, and he went no farther than
+Glencoe, where he spent an occasional Sunday. Today Mr. Hopper rose from
+his chair when Mr. Carvel entered,--a most unprecedented action. The
+Colonel cleared his throat. Sitting down at his desk, he drummed upon it
+uneasily.
+
+"Mr. Hopper!" he said at length.
+
+Eliphalet crossed the room quickly, and something that was very near a
+smile was on his face. He sat down close to Mr. Carvel's chair with a
+semi-confidential air,--one wholly new, had the Colonel given it a
+thought. He did not, but began to finger some printed slips of paper
+which had indorsements on their backs. His fine lips were tightly closed,
+as if in pain.
+
+"Mr. Hopper," he said, "these Eastern notes are due this week, are they
+not?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The Colonel glanced up swiftly.
+
+"There is no use mincing matters, Hopper. You know as well as I that
+there is no money to pay them," said he, with a certain pompous attempt
+at severity which characterized his kind nature. "You have served me
+well. You have brought this business up to a modern footing, and made it
+as prosperous as any in the town. I am sorry, sir, that those
+contemptible Yankees should have forced us to the use of arms, and cut
+short many promising business careers such as yours, sir. But we have to
+face the music. We have to suffer for our principles.
+
+"These notes cannot be met, Mr. Hopper." And the good gentleman looked
+out of the window. He was thinking of a day, before the Mexican War, when
+his young wife had sat in the very chair filled by Mr. Hopper now. "These
+notes cannot be met," he repeated, and his voice was near to breaking.
+
+The flies droning in the hot office made the only sound. Outside the
+partition, among the bales, was silence.
+
+"Colonel," said Mr. Hopper, with a remarkable ease, "I cal'late these
+notes can be met."
+
+The Colonel jumped as if he had heard a shot, and one of the notes fell
+to the floor. Eliphalet picked it up tenderly, and held it.
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" Mr. Carvel cried. "There isn't a bank in town
+that will lend me money. I--I haven't a friend--a friend I may ask who
+can spare it, sir."
+
+Mr. Hopper lifted up his hand. It was a fat hand. Suavity was come upon
+it like a new glove and changed the man. He was no longer cringing. Now
+he had poise, such poise as we in these days are accustomed to see in
+leather and mahogany offices. The Colonel glared at him uncomfortably.
+
+"I will take up those notes myself, sir."
+
+"You!" cried the Colonel, incredulously, "You?"
+
+We must do Eliphalet justice. There was not a deal of hypocrisy in his
+nature, and now he did not attempt the part of Samaritan. He did not beam
+upon the Colonel and remind him of the day on which, homeless and
+friendless, he had been frightened into his store by a drove of mules.
+No. But his day,--the day toward which he had striven unknown and
+unnoticed for so many years--the day when he would laugh at the pride of
+those who had ignored and insulted him, was dawning at last. When we are
+thoughtless of our words, we do not reckon with that spark in little
+bosoms that may burst into flame and burn us. Not that Colonel Carvel had
+ever been aught but courteous and kind to all. His station in life had
+been his offence to Eliphalet, who strove now to hide an exultation that
+made him tremble.
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" demanded the Colonel, again.
+
+"I cal'late that I can gather together enough to meet the notes, Colonel.
+Just a little friendly transaction." Here followed an interval of sheer
+astonishment to Mr. Carvel.
+
+"You have this money?" he said at length. Mr. Hopper nodded.
+
+"And you will take my note for the amount?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The Colonel pulled his goatee, and sat back in his chair, trying to face
+the new light in which he saw his manager. He knew well enough that the
+man was not doing this out of charity, or even gratitude. He reviewed his
+whole career, from that first morning when he had carried bales to the
+shipping room, to his replacement of Mr. Hood, and there was nothing with
+which to accuse him. He remembered the warnings of Captain Lige and
+Virginia. He could not in honor ask a cent from the Captain now. He would
+not ask his sister-in-law, Mrs. Colfax, to let him touch the money he had
+so ably invested for her; that little which Virginia's mother had left
+the girl was sacred.
+
+Night after night Mr. Carvel had lain awake with the agony of those
+Eastern debts. Not to pay was to tarnish the name of a Southern
+gentleman. He could not sell the business. His house would bring nothing
+in these times. He rose and began to pace the floor, tugging at his chin.
+Twice he paused to stare at Mr. Hopper, who sat calmly on, and the third
+time stopped abruptly before him.
+
+"See here," he cried. "Where the devil did you get this money, sir?"
+
+Mr. Hopper did not rise.
+
+"I haven't been extravagant, Colonel, since I've worked for you," he
+said. "It don't cost me much to live. I've been fortunate in
+investments."
+
+The furrows in the Colonel's brow deepened.
+
+"You offer to lend me five times more than I have ever paid you, Mr.
+Hopper. Tell me how you have made this money before I accept it."
+
+Eliphalet had never been able to meet that eye since he had known it. He
+did not meet it now. But he went to his desk, and drew a long sheet of
+paper from a pigeonhole.
+
+"These be some of my investments," he answered, with just a tinge of
+surliness. "I cal'late they'll stand inspection. I ain't forcing you to
+take the money, sir," he flared up, all at once. "I'd like to save the
+business."
+
+Mr. Carvel was disarmed. He went unsteadily to his desk, and none save
+God knew the shock that his pride received that day. To rescue a name
+which had stood untarnished since he had brought it into the world, he
+drew forth some blank notes, and filled them out. But before he signed
+them he spoke:
+
+"You are a business man, Mr. Hopper," said he, "And as a business man you
+must know that these notes will not legally hold. It is martial law. The
+courts are abolished, and all transactions here in St. Louis are
+invalid."
+
+Eliphalet was about to speak.
+
+"One moment, sir," cried the Colonel, standing up and towering to his
+full height. "Law or no law, you shall have the money and interest, or
+your security, which is this business. I need not tell you, sir, that my
+word is sacred, and binding forever upon me and mine."
+
+"I'm not afraid, Colonel," answered Mr. Hopper, with a feeble attempt at
+geniality. He was, in truth, awed at last.
+
+"You need not be, sir!" said the Colonel, with equal force. "If you were
+--this instant you should leave this place." He sat down, and continued
+more calmly: "It will not be long before a Southern Army marches into St.
+Louis, and the Yankee Government submits." He leaned forward. "Do you
+reckon we can hold the business together until then, Mr. Hopper?"
+
+God forbid that we should smile at the Colonel's simple faith. And if
+Eliphalet Hopper had done so, his history would have ended here.
+
+"Leave that to me, Colonel," he said soberly.
+
+Then came the reaction. The good Colonel sighed as he signed, away that
+business which had been an honor to the, city where it was founded, I
+thank heaven that we are not concerned with the details of their talk
+that day. Why should we wish to know the rate of interest on those notes,
+or the time? It was war-time.
+
+Mr. Hopper filled out his check, and presently departed. It was the
+signal for the little force which remained to leave. Outside, in the
+store; Ephum paced uneasily, wondering why his master did not come out.
+Presently he crept to the door of the office, pushed it open, and beheld
+Mr. Carvel with his head bowed, down in his hands.
+
+"Marse Comyn!" he cried, "Marse Comyn!"
+
+The Colonel looked up. His face was haggard.
+
+"Marse Comyn, you know what I done promise young MISS long time ago,
+befo'--befo' she done left us?"
+
+"Yes, Ephum."
+
+He saw the faithful old negro but dimly. Faintly he heard the pleading
+voice.
+
+"Marse Comyn, won' you give Ephum a pass down, river, ter fotch Cap'n
+Lige?"
+
+"Ephum," said the Colonel, sadly, "I had a letter from the Captain
+yesterday. He is at Cairo. His boat is a Federal transport, and he is in
+Yankee pay."
+
+Ephum took a step forward, appealingly, "But de Cap'n's yo' friend, Marse
+Comyn. He ain't never fo'get what you done fo' him, Marse Comyn. He ain't
+in de army, suh."
+
+"And I am the Captain's friend, Ephum," answered the Colonel, quietly.
+"But I will not ask aid from any man employed by the Yankee Government.
+No--not from my own brother, who is in a Pennsylvania regiments."
+
+Ephum shuffled out, and his heart was lead as he closed the store that
+night.
+
+Mr. Hopper has boarded a Fifth Street car, which jangles on with many
+halts until it comes to Bremen, a German settlement in the north of the
+city. At Bremen great droves of mules fill the street, and crowd the
+entrances of the sale stables there. Whips are cracking like pistol
+shots, Gentlemen with the yellow cavalry stripe of the United States Army
+are pushing to and fro among the drivers and the owners, and fingering
+the frightened animals. A herd breaks from the confusion and is driven
+like a whirlwind down the street, dividing at the Market House. They are
+going to board the Government transport--to die on the battlefields of
+Kentucky and Missouri.
+
+Mr. Hopper alights from the car with complacency. He stands for a while
+on a corner, against the hot building, surveying the busy scene,
+unnoticed. Mules! Was it not a prophecy,--that drove which sent him into
+Mr. Carvel's store?
+
+Presently a man with a gnawed yellow mustache and a shifty eye walks out
+of one of the offices, and perceives our friend.
+
+"Howdy, Mr. Hopper?" says he.
+
+Eliphalet extends a hand to be squeezed and returned. "Got them
+vouchers?" he asks. He is less careful of his English here.
+
+"Wal, I jest reckon," is the answer: The fellow was interrupted by the
+appearance of a smart young man in a smart uniform, who wore an air of
+genteel importance. He could not have been more than two and twenty, and
+his face and manners were those of a clerk. The tan of field service was
+lacking on his cheek, and he was black under the eyes.
+
+"Hullo, Ford," he said, jocularly.
+
+"Howdy, Cap," retorted the other. "Wal, suh, that last lot was an extry,
+fo' sure. As clean a lot as ever I seed. Not a lump on 'em. Gov'ment
+ain't cheated much on them there at one-eighty a head, I reckon."
+
+Mr. Ford said this with such an air of conviction and such a sober face
+that the Captain smiled. And at the same time he glanced down nervously
+at the new line of buttons on his chest.
+
+"I guess I know a mule from a Newfoundland dog by this time," said he.
+
+"Wal, I jest reckon," asserted Mr. Ford, with a loud laugh. "Cap'n
+Wentworth, allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Hopper. Mr. Hopper,
+Cap'n Wentworth."
+
+The Captain squeezed Mr. Hoppers hand with fervor. "You interested in
+mules, Mr. Hopper?" asked the military man.
+
+"I don't cal'late to be," said. Mr. Hopper. Let us hope that our worthy
+has not been presented as being wholly without a sense of humor. He
+grinned as he looked upon this lamb in the uniform of Mars, and added,
+"I'm just naturally patriotic, I guess. Cap'n, 'll you have a drink?"
+
+"And a segar," added Mr. Ford.
+
+"Just one," says the Captain. "It's d--d tiresome lookin' at mules all
+day in the sun."
+
+Well for Mr. Davitt that his mission work does not extend to Bremen, that
+the good man's charity keeps him at the improvised hospital down town.
+Mr. Hopper has resigned the superintendency of his Sunday School, it is
+true, but he is still a pillar of the church.
+
+The young officer leans against the bar, and listens to stories by Mr.
+Ford, which it behooves no church members to hear. He smokes Mr. Hopper's
+cigar and drinks his whiskey. And Eliphalet understands that the good
+Lord put some fools into the world in order to give the smart people a
+chance to practise their talents. Mr. Hopper neither drinks nor smokes,
+but he uses the spittoon with more freedom in this atmosphere.
+
+When at length the Captain has marched out, with a conscious but manly
+air, Mr. Hopper turns to Ford-- "Don't lose no time in presenting them
+vouchers at headquarters," says he. "Money is worth something now. And
+there's grumbling about this Department in the Eastern papers, If we have
+an investigation, we'll whistle. How much to-day?"
+
+"Three thousand," says Mr. Ford. He tosses off a pony of Bourbon, but his
+face is not a delight to look upon, "Hopper, you'll be a d--d rich man
+some day."
+
+"I cal'late to."
+
+"I do the dirty work. And because I ain't got no capital, I only get four
+per cent."
+
+"Don't one-twenty a day suit you?"
+
+"You get blasted near a thousand. And you've got horse contracts, and
+blanket contracts besides. I know you. What's to prevent my goin' south
+when the vouchers is cashed?" he cried. "Ain't it possible?"
+
+"I presume likely," said Mr. Hopper, quietly. "Then your mother'll have
+to move out of her little place."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NEWS FROM CLARENCE
+
+The epithet aristocrat may become odious and fatal on the banks of the
+Mississippi as it was on the banks of the Seine. Let no man deceive
+himself! These are fearful times. Thousands of our population, by the
+sudden stoppage of business, are thrown out of employment. When gaunt
+famine intrudes upon their household, it is but natural that they should
+inquire the cause. Hunger began the French Revolution.
+
+Virginia did not read this editorial, because it appeared in that
+abhorred organ of the Mudsills, the 'Missouri Democrat.' The wheels of
+fortune were turning rapidly that first hot summer of the war time. Let
+us be thankful that our flesh and blood are incapable of the fury of the
+guillotine. But when we think calmly of those days, can we escape without
+a little pity for the aristocrats? Do you think that many of them did not
+know hunger and want long before that cruel war was over?
+
+How bravely they met the grim spectre which crept so insidiously into
+their homes!
+
+"Virginia, child." said Mrs. Colfax, peevishly, one morning as they sat
+at breakfast, "why do you persist it wearing that old gown? It has gotten
+on my nerves, my dear. You really must have something new made, even if
+there are no men here to dress for."
+
+"Aunt Lillian, you must not say such things. I do not think that I ever
+dressed to please men."
+
+"Tut, tut; my dear, we all do. I did, even after married your uncle. It
+is natural. We must not go shabby in such times as these, or be out of
+fashion, Did you know that Prince Napoleon was actually coming here for a
+visit this autumn? We must be ready for him. I am having a fitting at
+Miss Elder's to-day."
+
+Virginia was learning patience. She did not reply as she poured out her
+aunt's coffee.
+
+"Jinny," said that lady, "come with me to Elder's, and I will give you
+some gowns. If Comyn had been as careful of his own money as of mine, you
+could dress decently."
+
+"I think I do dress decently, Aunt Lillian," answered the girl. "I do not
+need the gowns. Give me the money you intend to pay for them, and I can
+use it for a better purpose."
+
+Mrs. Colfax arranged her lace pettishly.
+
+"I am sick and tired of this superiority, Jinny." And in the same breath.
+"What would you do with it?"
+
+Virginia lowered her voice. "Hodges goes through the lines to-morrow
+night. I should send it to Clarence." "But you have no idea where
+Clarence is."
+
+"Hodges can find him."
+
+"Pshaw!" exclaimed her aunt, "I would not trust him. How do you know that
+he will get through the Dutch pickets to Price's army? Wasn't Souther
+captured last week, and that rash letter of Puss Russell's to Jack
+Brinsmade published in the Democrat?" She laughed at the recollection,
+and Virginia was fain to laugh too. "Puss hasn't been around much since.
+I hope that will cure her of saying what she thinks of people."
+
+"It won't," said Virginia.
+
+"I'll save my money until Price drives the Yankees from the state, and
+Clarence marches into the city at the head of a regiment," Mrs. Colfax
+went on, "It won't be long now."
+
+Virginia's eyes flashed.
+
+"Oh, you can't have read the papers. And don't you remember the letter
+Maude had from George? They need the bare necessities of life, Aunt
+Lillian. And half of Price's men have no arms at all."
+
+"Jackson," said Mrs. Colfax, "bring me a newspaper. Is there any news
+to-day?"
+
+"No," answered Virginia, quickly. "All we know is that Lyon has left
+Springfield to meet our troops, and that a great battle is coming,
+Perhaps--perhaps it is being fought to-day."
+
+Mrs. Colfax burst into tears, "Oh, Jinny," she cried, "how can you be so
+cruel!"
+
+That very evening a man, tall and lean, but with the shrewd and kindly
+eye of a scout, came into the sitting-room with the Colonel and handed a
+letter to Mrs. Colfax. In the hall he slipped into Virginia's hand
+another, in a "Jefferson Davis" envelope, and she thrust it in her gown
+--the girl was on fire as he whispered in her ear that he had seen
+Clarence, and that he was well. In two days an answer might be left at
+Mr. Russell's house. But she must be careful what she wrote, as the
+Yankee scouts were active.
+
+Clarence, indeed, had proven himself a man. Glory and uniform became him
+well, but danger and deprivation better. The words he had written,
+careless and frank and boyish, made Virginia's heart leap with pride.
+Mrs. Colfax's letter began with the adventure below the Arsenal, when the
+frail skiff had sunk near the island, He told how he had heard the
+captain of his escort sing out to him in the darkness, and how he had
+floated down the current instead, until, chilled and weary, he had
+contrived to seize the branches of a huge tree floating by. And how by a
+miracle the moon had risen. When the great Memphis packet bore down upon
+him, he had, been seen from her guards, and rescued and made much of; and
+set ashore at the next landing, for fear her captain would get into
+trouble. In the morning he had walked into the country, first providing
+himself with butternuts and rawhide boots and a bowie-knife. Virginia
+would never have recognized her dashing captain of dragoons in this
+guise.
+
+The letter was long for Clarence, and written under great difficulties
+from date to date. For nearly a month he had tramped over mountains and
+across river bottoms, waiting for news of an organized force of
+resistance in Missouri. Begging his way from cabin to cabin, and living
+on greasy bacon and corn pone, at length he crossed the swift Gasconade
+(so named by the French settlers because of its brawling ways) where the
+bridge of the Pacific railroad had been blown up by the Governor's
+orders. Then he learned that the untiring Lyon had steamed up the
+Missouri and had taken possession of Jefferson City without a blow, and
+that the ragged rebel force had fought and lost at Booneville. Footsore,
+but undaunted, he pushed on to join the army, which he heard was
+retreating southward along the western tier of counties of the state.
+
+On the banks of the Osage he fell in with two other young amen in as bad
+a plight as himself. They travelled together, until one day some rough
+farmers with shotguns leaped out of a bunch of willows on the borders of
+a creek and arrested all three for Union spies. And they laughed when Mr.
+Clarence tried to explain that he had not long since been the dapper
+captain of the State Dragoons.
+
+His Excellency, the Governor of Missouri (so acknowledged by all good
+Southerners), likewise laughed when Mr. Colfax and the two others were
+brought before him. His Excellency sat in a cabin surrounded by a camp
+which had caused the dogs of war to howl for very shame.
+
+"Colfax!" cried the Governor. "A Colfax of St. Louis in butternuts and
+rawhide boots?"
+
+"Give me a razor," demanded Clarence, with indignation, "a razor and a
+suit of clothes, and I will prove it." The Governor laughed once more.
+
+"A razor, young man! A suit of clothes You know not what you ask."
+
+"Are there any gentlemen from St. Louis here?" George Catherwood was
+brought in,--or rather what had once been George. Now he was a big
+frontiersman with a huge blond beard, and a bowie, knife stuck into his
+trousers in place of a sword. He recognized his young captain of dragoons
+the Governor apologized, and Clarence slept that night in the cabin. The
+next day he was given a horse, and a bright new rifle which the
+Governor's soldiers had taken from the Dutch at Cole Camp on the way
+south, And presently they made a junction with three thousand more who
+were their images. This was Price's army, but Price had gone ahead into
+Kansas to beg the great McCulloch and his Confederates to come to their
+aid and save the state.
+
+   "Dear mother, I wish that you and Jinny and Uncle Comyn could have
+   seen this country rabble. How you would have laughed, and cried,
+   because we are just like them. In the combined army two thousand
+   have only bowie-knives or clubs. Some have long rifles of Daniel
+   Boone's time, not fired for thirty years. And the impedimenta are a
+   sight. Open wagons and conestogas and carryalls and buggies, and
+   even barouches, weighted down with frying-pans and chairs and
+   feather beds. But we've got spirit, and we can whip Lyon's Dutchmen
+   and Yankees just as we are. Spirit is what counts, and the Yankees
+   haven't got it, I was made to-day a Captain of Cavalry under
+   Colonel Rives. I ride a great, raw-boned horse like an elephant.
+   He jolts me until I am sore,--not quite as easy as my thoroughbred,
+   Jefferson. Tell Jinny to care for him, and have him ready when we
+   march into St. Louis."
+
+                  "COWSKIN PRAIRIE, 9th July.
+
+   "We have whipped Sigel on the prairie by Coon Creek and killed--we
+   don't know how many. Tell Maude that George distinguished himself
+   in the fight. We cavalry did not get a chance.
+
+   "We have at last met McCulloch and his real soldiers. We cheered
+   until we cried when we saw their ranks of gray, with the gold
+   buttons and the gold braid and the gold stars. General McCulloch
+   has taken me on his staff, and promised me a uniform. But how to
+   clothe and feed and arm our men! We have only a few poor cattle,
+   and no money. But our men don't complain. We shall whip the
+   Yankees before we starve."
+
+For many days Mrs. Colfax did not cease to bewail the hardship which her
+dear boy was forced to endure. He, who was used to linen sheets and eider
+down, was without rough blanket or shelter; who was used to the best
+table in the state, was reduced to husks.
+
+"But, Aunt Lillian," cried Virginia, "he is fighting for the South. If he
+were fed and clothed like the Yankees, we should not be half so proud of
+him."
+
+Why set down for colder gaze the burning words that Clarence wrote to
+Virginia. How she pored over that letter, and folded it so that even the
+candle-droppings would not be creased and fall away! He was happy, though
+wretched because he could not see her. It was the life he had longed for.
+At last (and most pathetic!) he was proving his usefulness in this world.
+He was no longer the mere idler whom she had chidden.
+
+   "Jinny, do you remember saying so many years ago that our ruin would
+   come of our not being able to work? How I wish you could see us
+   felling trees to make bullet-moulds, and forging slugs for canister,
+   and making cartridges at night with our bayonets as candlesticks.
+   Jinny dear, I know that you will keep up your courage. I can see
+   you sewing for us, I can hear you praying for us."
+
+It was, in truth, how Virginia learned to sew. She had always detested
+it. Her fingers were pricked and sore weeks after she began. Sad to
+relate, her bandages, shirts, and havelocks never reached the front,
+--those havelocks, to withstand the heat of the tropic sun, which were made
+in thousands by devoted Union women that first summer of the war, to be
+ridiculed as nightcaps by the soldiers.
+
+"Why should not our soldiers have them, too?" said Virginia to the
+Russell girls. They were never so happy as when sewing on them against
+the arrival of the Army of Liberation, which never came.
+
+The long, long days of heat dragged slowly, with little to cheer those
+families separated from their dear ones by a great army. Clarence might
+die, and a month--perhaps a year--pass without news, unless he were
+brought a prisoner to St. Louis. How Virginia envied Maude because the
+Union lists of dead and wounded would give her tidings of her brother
+Tom, at least! How she coveted the many Union families, whose sons and
+brothers were at the front, this privilege!
+
+We were speaking of the French Revolution, when, as Balzac remarked, to
+be a spy was to be a patriot. Heads are not so cheap in our Anglo-Saxon
+countries; passions not so fierce and uncontrollable. Compare, with a
+prominent historian, our Boston Massacre and St. Bartholomew.
+
+They are both massacres. Compare Camp Jackson, or Baltimore, where a few
+people were shot, with some Paris street scenes after the Bastille.
+Feelings in each instance never ran higher. Our own provost marshal was
+hissed in the street, and called "Robespierre," and yet he did not fear
+the assassin's knife. Our own Southern aristocrats were hemmed in in a
+Union city (their own city). No women were thrown into prison, it is
+true. Yet one was not permitted to shout for Jeff Davis on the street
+corner before the provost's guard. Once in a while a detachment of the
+Home Guards, commanded by a lieutenant; would march swiftly into a street
+and stop before a house, whose occupants would run to the rear, only to
+encounter another detachment in the alley.
+
+One day, in great excitement, Eugenie Renault rang the bell of the Carvel
+house, and ran past the astounded Jackson up the stairs to Virginia's
+room, the door of which she burst open.
+
+"Oh, Jinny!" she cried, "Puss Russell's house is surrounded by Yankees,
+and Puss and Emily and all the family are prisoners!"
+
+"Prisoners! What for?" said Virginia, dropping in her excitement her last
+year's bonnet, which she was trimming with red, white, and red.
+
+"Because," said Eugenie, sputtering with indignation "because they waved
+at some of our poor fellows who were being taken to the slave pen. They
+were being marched past Mr. Russell's house under guard--Puss had a
+small--"
+
+"Confederate flag," put in Virginia, smiling in spite of herself.
+
+"And she waved it between the shutters," Eugenie continued. And some one
+told, the provost marshal. He has had the house surrounded, and the
+family have to stay there."
+
+"But if the food gives out?"
+
+"Then," said Miss Renault, in a voice of awe, "then each one of the
+family is to have just a common army ration. They are to be treated as
+prisoners."
+
+"Oh, those Yankees are detestable!" exclaimed Virginia. "But they shall
+pay for it. As soon as our army is organized and equipped, they shall pay
+for it ten times over." She tried on the bonnet, conspicuous with its red
+and white ribbons, before the glass. Then she ran to the closet and drew
+forth the white gown with its red trimmings. "Wait for me, Genie," she
+said, "and we'll go down to Puss's house together. It may cheer her to
+see us."
+
+"But not in that dress," said Eugenie, aghast. "They will arrest you."
+"Oh, how I wish they would!" cried Virginia. And her eyes flashed so that
+Eugenie was frightened. "How I wish they would!"
+
+Miss Renault regarded her friend with something of adoration from beneath
+her black lashes. It was about five in the afternoon when they started
+out together under Virginia's white parasol, Eugenie's slimmer courage
+upheld by her friend's bearing. We must remember that Virginia was young,
+and that her feelings were akin to those our great-grandmothers
+experienced when the British held New York. It was as if she had been
+born to wear the red and white of the South. Elderly gentlemen of
+Northern persuasion paused in their homeward walk to smile in admiration,
+--some sadly, as Mr. Brinsmade. Young gentlemen found an excuse to
+retrace their steps a block or two. But Virginia walked on air, and saw
+nothing. She was between fierce anger and exaltation. She did not deign
+to drop her eyes as low as the citizen sergeant and guard in front of
+Puss Russell's house (these men were only human, after all); she did not
+so much as glance at the curious people standing on the corner, who could
+not resist a murmur of delight. The citizen sergeant only smiled, and
+made no move to arrest the young lady in red and white. Nor did Puss
+fling open the blinds and wave at her.
+
+"I suppose its because Mr. Russell won't let her," said Virginia,
+disconsolately, "Genie, let's go to headquarters, and show this Yankee
+General Fremont that we are not afraid of him."
+
+Eugenie's breath was taken away by the very boldness of this
+proposition.. She looked up timidly into Virginia's face, and
+hero-worship got the better of prudence.
+
+The house which General Fremont appropriated for his use when he came
+back from Europe to assume command in the West was not a modest one. It
+still stands, a large mansion of brick with a stone front, very tall and
+very wide, with an elaborate cornice and plate-glass windows, both tall
+and broad, and a high basement. Two stately stone porches capped by
+elaborate iron railings adorn it in front and on the side. The chimneys
+are generous and proportional. In short, the house is of that type built
+by many wealthy gentlemen in the middle of the century, which has best
+stood the test of time,--the only type which, if repeated to-day, would
+not clash with the architectural education which we are receiving. A
+spacious yard well above the pavement surrounds it, sustained by a wall
+of dressed stones, capped by an iron fence. The whole expressed wealth,
+security, solidity, conservatism. Alas, that the coal deposits under the
+black mud of our Western states should, at length, have driven the owners
+of these houses out of them! They are now blackened, almost buried in
+soot; empty, or half-tenanted by boarders, Descendants of the old
+families pass them on their way to business or to the theatre with a
+sigh. The sons of those who owned them have built westward, and west-ward
+again, until now they are six miles from the river.
+
+On that summer evening forty years ago, when Virginia and Eugenie came in
+sight of the house, a scene of great animation was before them. Talk was
+rife over the commanding general's pomp and circumstance. He had just
+returned from Europe, where pomp and circumstance and the military were
+wedded. Foreign officers should come to America to teach our army dress
+and manners. A dashing Hungarian commanded the general's body-guard,
+which honorable corps was even then drawn up in the street before the
+house, surrounded at a respectable distance by a crowd that feared to
+jest. They felt like it save when they caught the stern military eye of
+the Hungarian captain. Virginia gazed at the glittering uniforms,
+resplendent in the sun, and at the sleek and well-fed horses, and
+scalding tears came as she thought of the half-starved rabble of Southern
+patriots on the burning prairies. Just then a sharp command escaped in
+broken English from the Hungarian. The people in the yard of the mansion
+parted, and the General himself walked proudly out of the gate to the
+curb, where his charger was pawing the gutter. As he put foot to the
+stirrup, the eye of the great man (once candidate, and again to be, for
+President) caught the glint of red and white on the corner. For an
+instant he stood transfixed to the spot, with one leg in the air. Then he
+took it down again and spoke to a young officer of his staff, who smiled
+and began to walk toward them. Little Eugenie's knees trembled. She
+seized Virginia's arm, and whispered in agony.
+
+"Oh, Jinny, you are to be arrested, after all. Oh, I wish you hadn't been
+so bold!"
+
+"Hush," said Virginia, as she prepared to slay the young officer with a
+look. She felt like flying at his throat, and choking him for the
+insolence of that smile. How dare he march undaunted to within six paces
+of those eyes? The crowd drew back, But did Miss Carvel retreat? Not a
+step. "Oh, I hope he will arrest me," she said passionately, to Eugenie.
+"He will start a conflagration beyond the power of any Yankee to quell."
+
+But hush! he was speaking. "You are my prisoners"? No, those were not the
+words, surely. The lieutenant had taken off his cap. He bowed very low
+and said:
+
+"Ladies, the General's compliments, and he begs that this much of the
+sidewalk may be kept clear for a few moments."
+
+What was left for them, after that, save a retreat? But he was not
+precipitate. Miss Virginia crossed the street with a dignity and bearing
+which drew even the eyes of the body-guard to one side. And there she
+stood haughtily until the guard and the General had thundered away. A
+crowd of black-coated civilians, and quartermasters and other officers in
+uniform, poured out of the basement of the house into the yards. One
+civilian, a youngish man a little inclined to stoutness, stopped at the
+gate, stared, then thrust some papers in his pocket and hurried down the
+side street. Three blocks thence he appeared abreast of Miss Carvel. More
+remarkable still, he lifted his hat clear of his head. Virginia drew
+back. Mr. Hopper, with his newly acquired equanimity and poise, startled
+her.
+
+"May I have the pleasure," said that gentleman, "of accompanying you
+home?"
+
+Eugenie giggled, Virginia was more annoyed than she showed.
+
+"You must not come out of your way," she said. Then she added. "I am sure
+you must go back to the store. It is only six o'clock."
+
+Had Virginia but known, this occasional tartness in her speech gave
+Eliphalet an infinite delight, even while it hurt him. His was a nature
+which liked to gloat over a goal on the horizon He cared not a whit for
+sweet girls; they cloyed. But a real lady was something to attain. He had
+revised his vocabulary for just such an occasion, and thrown out some of
+the vernacular.
+
+"Business is not so pressing nowadays, Miss Carvel," he answered, with a
+shade of meaning.
+
+"Then existence must be rather heavy for you," she said. She made no
+attempt to introduce him to Eugenie. "If we should have any more
+victories like Bull Run, prosperity will come back with a rush," said the
+son of Massachusetts. "Southern Confederacy, with Missouri one of its
+stars an industrial development of the South--fortunes in cotton"
+
+Virginia turned quickly, "Oh, how dare you?" she cried. "How dare you
+speak flippantly of such things?" His suavity was far from overthrown.
+
+"Flippantly Miss Carvel?" said he. "I assure you that I want to see the
+South win." What he did not know was that words seldom convince women.
+But he added something which reduced her incredulity for the time. "Do
+you cal'late," said he,--that I could work for your father, and wish ruin
+to his country?"
+
+"But you are a Yankee born," she exclaimed.
+
+"There be a few sane Yankees," replied Mr. Hopper, dryly. A remark which
+made Eugenie laugh outright, and Virginia could not refrain from a smile.
+
+But much against her will he walked home with her. She was indignant by
+the time she reached Locust Street. He had never dared do such a thing
+before, What had got into the man? Was it because he had become a
+manager, and governed the business during her father's frequent absences?
+No matter what Mr. Hopper's politics, he would always be to her a
+low-born Yankee, a person wholly unworthy of notice.
+
+At the corner of Olive Street, a young man walking with long strides
+almost bumped into them. He paused looked back, and bowed as if uncertain
+of an acknowledgment. Virginia barely returned his bow. He had been very
+close to her, and she had had time to notice that his coat was
+threadbare. When she looked again, he had covered half the block. Why
+should she care if Stephen Brice had seen her in company with Mr, Hopper?
+Eliphalet, too, had seen Stephen, and this had added zest to his
+enjoyment. It was part of the fruits of his reward. He wished in that
+short walk that he might meet Mr. Cluyme and Belle, and every man and
+woman and child in the city whom he knew. From time to time he glanced at
+the severe profile of the aristocrat beside him (he had to look up a bit,
+likewise), and that look set him down among the beasts of prey. For she
+was his rightful prey, and he meant not to lose one tittle of enjoyment
+in the progress of the game. Many and many a night in the bare little
+back room at Miss Crane's, Eliphalet had gloated over the very event
+which was now come to pass. Not a step of the way but what he had lived
+through before.
+
+The future is laid open to such men as he. Since he had first seen the
+black cloud of war rolling up from the South, a hundred times had he
+rehearsed the scene with Colonel Carvel which had actually taken place a
+week before. A hundred times had he prepared his speech and manner for
+this first appearance in public with Virginia after he had forced the
+right to walk in her company. The words he had prepared--commonplace, to
+be sure, but carefully chosen--flowed from his lips in a continual nasal
+stream. The girl answered absently, her feminine instinct groping after a
+reason for it all. She brightened when she saw her father at the doors
+and, saying good by to Eugenie, tripped up the steps, bowing to Eliphalet
+coldly.
+
+"Why, bless us, Jinny," said the Colonel, "you haven't been parading the
+town in that costume! You'll have us in Lynch's slave pen by to-morrow
+night. My land!" laughed he, patting her under the chin, "there's no
+doubt about your sentiments, anyhow."
+
+"I've been over to Puss Russell's house," said she, breathless. "They've
+closed it up, you know--" (He nodded.) "And then we went--Eugenie and I,
+to headquarters, just to see what the Yankees would do."
+
+The Colonel's smile faded. He looked grave. "You must take care, honey,"
+he said, lowering his voice. "They suspect me now of communicating with
+the Governor and McCulloch. Jinny, it's all very well to be brave, and to
+stand by your colors. But this sort of thing," said he, stroking the
+gown, "this sort of thing doesn't help the South, my dear, and only sets
+spies upon us. Ned tells me that there was a man in plain clothes
+standing in the alley last night for three hours."
+
+"Pa," cried the girl, "I'm so sorry." Suddenly searching his face with a
+swift instinct, she perceived that these months had made it yellow and
+lined. "Pa, dear, you must come to Glencoe to-morrow and rest You must
+not go off on any more trips."
+
+The Colonel shook his head sadly.
+
+"It isn't the trips, Jinny There are duties, my dear, pleasant duties
+--Jinny--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+The Colonel's eye had suddenly fallen on Mr, Hopper, who was still
+standing at the bottom of the steps. He checked himself abruptly as
+Eliphalet pulled off his hat,
+
+"Howdy, Colonel?" he said.
+
+Virginia was motionless, with her back to the intruder, She was frozen by
+a presentiment. As she saw her father start down the steps, she yearned
+to throw herself in front of him--to warn him of something; she knew not
+what. Then she heard the Colonel's voice, courteous and kindly as ever.
+And yet it broke a little as he greeted his visitor.
+
+"Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Hopper?"
+
+Virginia started
+
+"I don't know but what I will, thank you, Colonel," he answered; easily.
+"I took the liberty of walking home with your daughter."
+
+Virginia fairly flew into the house and up the stairs. Gaining her room,
+she shut the door and turned the key, as though he might pursue her
+there. The man's face had all at once become a terror. She threw herself
+on the lounge and buried her face in her hands, and she saw it still
+leering at her with a new confidence. Presently she grew calmer; rising,
+she put on the plainest of her scanty wardrobe, and went down the stairs,
+all in a strange trepidation new to her. She had never been in fear of a
+man before. She hearkened over the banisters for his voice, heard it, and
+summoned all her courage. How cowardly she had been to leave her father
+alone with him.
+
+Eliphalet stayed to tea. It mattered little to him that Mrs. Colfax
+ignored him as completely as if his chair had been vacant He glanced at
+that lady once, and smiled, for he was tasting the sweets of victory. It
+was Virginia who entertained him, and even the Colonel never guessed what
+it cost her. Eliphalet himself marvelled at her change of manner, and
+gloated over that likewise. Not a turn or a quiver of the victim's pain
+is missed by your beast of prey. The Colonel was gravely polite, but
+preoccupied. Had he wished it, he could not have been rude to a guest. He
+offered Mr. Hopper a cigar with the same air that he would have given it
+to a governor.
+
+"Thank'ee, Colonel, I don't smoke," he said, waving the bog away.
+
+Mrs. Colfax flung herself out of the room.
+
+It was ten o'clock when Eliphalet reached Miss Crane's, and picked his
+way up the front steps where the boarders were gathered.
+
+"The war doesn't seem to make any difference in your business, Mr.
+Hopper," his landlady remarked, "where have you been so late?"
+
+"I happened round at Colonel Carvel's this afternoon, and stayed for tea
+with 'em," he answered, striving to speak casually.
+
+Miss Crane lingered in Mrs. Abner Reed's room later than usual that
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SCOURGE OF WAR
+
+"Virginia," said Mrs. Colfax, the next morning on coming downstairs, "I
+am going back to Bellegarde today. I really cannot put up with such a
+person as Comyn had here to tea last night."
+
+"Very well, Aunt Lillian. At what time shall I order the carriage?"
+
+The lady was surprised. It is safe to say that she had never accurately
+gauged the force which Virginia's respect for her elders, and affection
+for her aunt through Clarence, held in check. Only a moment since Mrs.
+Colfax had beheld her niece. Now there had arisen in front of her a tall
+person of authority, before whom she deferred instinctively. It was not
+what Virginia said, for she would not stoop to tirade. Mrs. Colfax sank
+into a chair, seeing only the blurred lines of a newspaper the girl had
+thrust into her hand.
+
+"What--what is it?" she gasped. "I cannot read."
+
+"There has been a battle at Wilson's Creek," said Virginia, in an
+emotionless voice. "General Lyon is killed, for which I suppose we should
+be thankful. More than seven hundred of the wounded are on their way
+here. They are bringing them one hundred and twenty miles, from
+Springfield to Rollo, in rough army wagons, with scarcely anything to eat
+or drink."
+
+"And--Clarence?"
+
+"His name is not there."
+
+"Thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Colfax. "Are the Yankees beaten?"
+
+"Yes," said Virginia, coldly. "At what time shall I order the carriage to
+take you to Bellegarde?"
+
+Mrs. Colfax leaned forward and caught the hem of her niece's gown. "Oh,
+let me stay," she cried, "let me stay. Clarence may be with them."
+
+Virginia looked down at her without pity.
+
+"As you please, Aunt Lillian," she answered. "You know that you may
+always stay here. I only beg of you one thing, that when you have
+anything to complain of, you will bring it to me, and not mention it
+before Pa. He has enough to worry him."
+
+"Oh, Jinny," sobbed the lady, in tears again, "how can you be so cruel at
+such a time, when my nerves are all in pieces?"
+
+But she did not lift her voice at dinner, which was very poor indeed for
+Colonel Carvel's house. All day long Virginia, assisted by Uncle Ben and
+Aunt Easter, toiled in the stifling kitchen, preparing dainties which she
+had long denied herself. At evening she went to the station at Fourteenth
+Street with her father, and stood amongst the people, pressed back by the
+soldiers, until the trains came in. Alas, the heavy basket which the
+Colonel carried on his arm was brought home again. The first hundred to
+arrive, ten hours in a hot car without food or water, were laid groaning
+on the bottom of great furniture vans, and carted to the new House of
+Refuge Hospital, two miles to the south of the city.
+
+The next day many good women went there, Rebel and Union alike, to have
+their hearts wrung. The new and cheap building standing in the hot sun
+reeked with white wash and paint. The miserable men lay on the hard
+floor, still in the matted clothes they had worn in battle. Those were
+the first days of the war, when the wages of our passions first came to
+appal us. Many of the wounds had not been tended since they were dressed
+on the field weeks before.
+
+Mrs. Colfax went too, with the Colonel and her niece, although she
+declared repeatedly that she could not go through with such an ordeal.
+She spoke the truth, for Mr. Carvel had to assist her to the
+waiting-room. Then he went back to the improvised wards to find Virginia
+busy over a gaunt Arkansan of Price's army, whose pitiful, fever-glazed
+eyes were following her every motion. His frontiersman's clothes, stained
+with blackened blood, hung limp over his wasted body. At Virginia's
+bidding the Colonel ran downstairs for a bucket of fresh water, and she
+washed the caked dust from his face and hands. It was Mr. Brinsmade who
+got the surgeon to dress the man's wound, and to prescribe some of the
+broth from Virginia's basket. For the first time since the war began
+something of happiness entered her breast.
+
+It was Mr. Brinsmade who was everywhere that day, answering the questions
+of distracted mothers and fathers and sisters who thronged the place;
+consulting with the surgeons; helping the few who knew how to work in
+placing mattresses under the worst cases; or again he might have been
+seen seated on the bare floor with a pad on his knee, taking down the
+names of dear ones in distant states,--that he might spend his night
+writing to them.
+
+They put a mattress under the Arkansan. Virginia did not leave him until
+he had fallen asleep, and a smile of peace was come upon his sunken face.
+Dismayed at the fearful sights about her, awed by the groans that rose on
+every side, she was choosing her way swiftly down the room to join her
+father and aunt in the carriage below.
+
+The panic of flight had seized her. She felt that another little while in
+this heated, horrible place would drive her mad. She was almost at the
+door when she came suddenly upon a sight that made her pause.
+
+An elderly lady in widow's black was kneeling beside a man groaning in
+mortal agony, fanning away the flies already gathering about his face. He
+wore the uniform of a Union sergeant,--dusty and splotched and torn. A
+small Testament was clasped convulsively in the fingers of his right
+band. The left sleeve was empty. Virginia lingered, whelmed in pity,
+thrilled by a wonderful womanliness of her who knelt there. Her face the
+girl had not even seen, for it was bent over the man. The sweetness of
+her voice held Virginia as in a spell, and the sergeant stopped groaning
+that he might listen:
+
+"You have a wife?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"And a child?"
+
+The answer came so painfully.
+
+"A boy, ma'am--born the week--before I came--away."
+
+"I shall write to your wife," said the lady, so gently that Virginia
+could scarce hear, "and tell her that you are cared for. Where does she
+live?"
+
+He gave the address faintly--some little town in Minnesota. Then he
+added, "God bless you, lady."
+
+Just then the chief surgeon came and stood over them. The lady turned her
+face up to him, and tears sparkled in her eyes. Virginia felt them wet in
+her own. Her worship was not given to many. Nobility, character,
+efficiency,-all were written on that face. Nobility spoke in the large
+features, in the generous mouth, in the calm, gray eyes. Virginia had
+seen her often before, but not until now was the woman revealed to her.
+
+"Doctor, could this man's life be saved if I took him to my home?"
+
+The surgeon got down beside her and took the man's pulse. The eyes
+closed. For a while the doctor knelt there, shaking his head. "He has
+fainted," he said.
+
+"Do you think he can be saved?" asked the lady again. The surgeon
+smiled,--such a smile as a good man gives after eighteen hours of
+amputating, of bandaging, of advising,--work which requires a firm hand,
+a clear eye and brain, and a good heart.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Brice," he said, "I shall be glad to get you permission to
+take him, but we must first make him worth the taking. Another hour would
+have been too late." He glanced hurriedly about the busy room, and then
+added, "We must have one more to help us."
+
+Just then some one touched Virginia's arm. It was her father.
+
+"I am afraid we must go, dear," he said, "your aunt is getting
+impatient."
+
+"Won't you please go without me, Pa?" she asked. "Perhaps I can be of
+some use."
+
+The Colonel cast a wondering glance at the limp uniform, and went away.
+The surgeon, who knew the Carvel family, gave Virginia a look of
+astonishment. It was Mrs. Brice's searching gaze that brought the color
+to the girl's, face.
+
+"Thank you, my dear," she said simply.
+
+As soon as he could get his sister-in-law off to Locust Street in the
+carriage, Colonel Carvel came back. For two reeking hours he stood
+against the newly plastered wall. Even he was surprised at the fortitude
+and skill Virginia showed from the very first, when she had deftly cut
+away the stiffened blue cloth, and helped to take off the rough bandages.
+At length the fearful operation was finished, and the weary surgeon,
+gathering up his box, expressed with all the energy left to him, his
+thanks to the two ladies.
+
+Virginia stood up, faint and dizzy. The work of her hands had sustained
+her while it lasted, but now the ordeal was come. She went down the
+stairs on her father's arm, and out into the air. All at once she knew
+that Mrs. Brice was beside her, and had taken her by the hand.
+
+"My dear?" she was saying, "God will reward you for this act. You have
+taught many of us to-day a lesson we should have learned in our Bibles."
+
+Virginia trembled with many emotions, but she answered nothing. The mere
+presence of this woman had a strange effect upon the girl,--she was
+filled with a longing unutterable. It was not because Margaret Brice was
+the mother of him whose life had been so strangely blended with hers
+--whom she saw in her dreams. And yet now some of Stephen's traits seemed
+to come to her understanding, as by a revelation. Virginia had labored
+through the heat of the day by Margaret Brice's side doing His work,
+which levels all feuds and makes all women sisters. One brief second had
+been needful for the spell.
+
+The Colonel bowed with that courtesy and respect which distinguished him,
+and Mrs. Brice left them to go back into the room of torment, and watch
+by the sergeant's pallet. Virginia's eyes followed her up the stairs, and
+then she and her father walked slowly to the carriage. With her foot on
+the step Virginia paused.
+
+"Pa," she said, "do you think it would be possible to get them to let us
+take that Arkansan into our house?"
+
+"Why, honey, I'll ask Brinsmade if you like," said the Colonel. "Here he
+comes now, and Anne."
+
+It was Virginia who put the question to him.
+
+"My dear," replied that gentleman, patting her, "I would do anything in
+the world for you. I'll see General Fremont this very afternoon.
+Virginia," he added, soberly, "it is such acts as yours to-day that give
+us courage to live in these times."
+
+Anne kissed her friend.
+
+"Oh, Jinny, I saw what you were doing for one of our men. What am I
+saying?" she cried. "They are your men, too. This horrible war cannot
+last. It cannot last. It was well that Virginia did not see the smile on
+the face of the commanding general when Mr. Brinsmade at length got to
+him with her request. This was before the days when the wounded arrived
+by the thousands, when the zeal of the Southern ladies threatened to
+throw out of gear the workings of a great system. But the General, had
+had his eye on Mr. Carvel from the first. Therefore he smiled.
+
+"Colonel Carvel," said Mr. Brinsmade, with dignity, "is a gentleman. When
+he gives his word, it is sacred, sir."
+
+"Even to an enemy," the General put in, "By George, Brinsmade, unless I
+knew you, I should think that you were half rebel yourself. Well, well,
+he may have his Arkansan."
+
+Mr. Brinsmade, when he conveyed the news to the Carvel house, did not say
+that he had wasted a precious afternoon in the attempt to interview his
+Excellency, the Commander in-chief. It was like obtaining an audience
+with the Sultan or the Czar. Citizens who had been prominent in affairs
+for twenty years, philanthropists and patriotic-spirited men like Mr.
+Brinsmade, the mayor, and all the ex-mayors mopped their brows in one of
+the general's anterooms of the big mansion, and wrangled with beardless
+youths in bright uniforms who were part of the chain. The General might
+have been a Richelieu, a Marlborough. His European notions of uniformed
+inaccessibility he carried out to the letter. He was a royal personage,
+seldom seen, who went abroad in the midst of a glittering guard. It did
+not seem to weigh with his Excellency that these simple and democratic
+gentlemen would not put up with this sort of thing. That they who had
+saved the city to the Union were more or less in communication with a
+simple and democratic President; that in all their lives they had never
+been in the habit of sitting idly for two hours to mop their brows.
+
+On the other hand, once you got beyond the gold lace and the etiquette,
+you discovered a good man and a patriot. It was far from being the
+General's fault that Mr. Hopper and others made money in mules and
+worthless army blankets. Such things always have been, and always will be
+unavoidable when this great country of ours rises from the deep sleep of
+security into which her sons have lulled her, to demand her sword. We
+shall never be able to realize that the maintenance of a standing army of
+comfortable size will save millions in the end. So much for Democracy
+when it becomes a catchword.
+
+The General was a good man, had he done nothing else than encourage the
+Western Sanitary Commission, that glorious army of drilled men and women
+who gave up all to relieve the suffering which the war was causing. Would
+that a novel--a great novel--might be written setting forth with truth
+its doings. The hero of it could be Calvin Brinsmade, and a nobler hero
+than he was never under a man's hand. For the glory of generals fades
+beside his glory.
+
+It was Mr. Brinsmade's carriage that brought Mrs. Brice home from her
+trying day in the hospital. Stephen, just returned from drill at Verandah
+hall, met her at the door. She would not listen to his entreaties to
+rest, but in the evening, as usual, took her sewing to the porch behind
+the house, where there was a little breeze.
+
+"Such a singular thing happened to-day, Stephen," she said. "It was while
+we were trying to save the life of a poor sergeant who had lost his arm.
+I hope we shall be allowed to have him here. He is suffering horribly."
+
+"What happened, mother?" he asked.
+
+"It was soon after I had come upon this poor fellow," she said. "I saw
+the--the flies around him. And as I got down beside him to fan them away
+I had such a queer sensation. I knew that some one was standing behind
+me, looking at me. Then Dr. Allerdyce came, and I asked him about the
+man, and he said there was a chance of saving him if we could only get
+help. Then some one spoke up,--such a sweet voice. It was that Miss
+Carvel my dear, with whom you had such a strange experience when you
+bought Hester, and to whose party you once went. Do you remember that
+they offered us their house in Glencoe when the Judge was so ill?"
+
+"Yes," said Stephen.
+
+"She is a wonderful creature," his mother continued. "Such personality,
+such life! And wasn't it a remarkable offer for a Southern woman to make?
+They feel so bitterly, and--and I do not blame them." The good lady put
+down on her lap the night-shirt she was making. "I saw how it happened.
+The girl was carried away by her pity. And, my dear, her capability
+astonished me. One might have thought that she had always been a nurse.
+The experience was a dreadful one for me--what must it have been for her.
+After the operation was over, I followed her downstairs to where she was
+standing with her father in front of the building, waiting for their
+carriage. I felt that I must say something to her, for in all my life I
+have never seen a nobler thing done. When I saw her there, I scarcely
+knew what to say. Words seemed so inadequate. It was then three o'clock,
+and she had been working steadily in that place since morning. I am sure
+she could not have borne it much longer. Sheer courage carried her
+through it, I know, for her hand trembled so when I took it, and she was
+very pale. She usually has color, I believe. Her father, the Colonel, was
+with her, and he bowed to me with such politeness. He had stood against
+the wall all the while we had worked, and he brought a mattress for us. I
+have heard that his house is watched, and that they have him under
+suspicion for communicating with the Confederate leaders." Mrs. Brice
+sighed. He seems such a fine character. I hope they will not get into any
+trouble."
+
+"I hope not, mother," said Stephen.
+
+It was two mornings later that Judge Whipple and Stephen drove to the
+Iron Mountain depot, where they found a German company of Home Guards
+drawn up. On the long wooden platform under the sheds Stephen caught
+sight of Herr Korner and Herr Hauptmann amid a group of their countrymen.
+Little Korner came forward to clasp his hands. The tears ran on his
+cheeks, and he could not speak for emotion. Judge Whipple, grim and
+silent, stood apart. But he uncovered his head with the others when the
+train rolled in. Reverently they entered a car where the pine boxes were
+piled one on another, and they bore out the earthly remains of Captain
+Carl Richter.
+
+Far from the land of his birth, among those same oaks on Bloody Hill
+where brave Lyon fell, he had gladly given up his life for the new
+country and the new cause he had made his own.
+
+That afternoon in the cemetery, as the smoke of the last salute to a hero
+hung in the flickering light and drifted upward through the great trees,
+as the still air was yet quivering with the notes of the bugle-call which
+is the soldiers requiem, a tall figure, gaunt and bent, stepped out from
+behind the blue line of the troops. It was that of Judge Whipple. He
+carried in his hand a wreath of white roses--the first of many to be laid
+on Richter's grave.
+
+Poor Richter! How sad his life had been! And yet he had not filled it
+with sadness. For many a month, and many a year, Stephen could not look
+upon his empty place without a pang. He missed the cheery songs and the
+earnest presence even more than he had thought. Carl Richter,--as his
+father before him,--had lived for others. Both had sacrificed their
+bodies for a cause. One of them might be pictured as he trudged with
+Father Jahn from door to door through the Rhine country, or shouldering
+at sixteen a heavy musket in the Landwehr's ranks to drive the tyrant
+Napoleon from the beloved Fatherland Later, aged before his time, his
+wife dead of misery, decrepit and prison-worn in the service of a
+thankless country, his hopes lived again in Carl, the swordsman of Jena.
+Then came the pitiful Revolution, the sundering of all ties, the elder
+man left to drag out his few weary days before a shattered altar. In Carl
+a new aspiration had sprung up, a new patriotism stirred. His, too, had
+been the sacrifice. Happy in death, for he had helped perpetuate that
+great Union which should be for all time the refuge of the oppressed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LIST OF SIXTY
+
+One chilling day in November, when an icy rain was falling on the black
+mud of the streets, Virginia looked out of the window. Her eye was caught
+by two horses which were just skeletons with the skin stretched over
+them. One had a bad sore on his flank, and was lame. They were pulling a
+rattle-trap farm wagon with a buckled wheel. On the seat a man, pallid
+and bent and scantily clad, was holding the reins in his feeble hands,
+while beside him cowered a child of ten wrapped in a ragged blanket. In
+the body of the wagon, lying on a mattress pressed down in the midst of
+broken, cheap furniture and filthy kitchen ware, lay a gaunt woman in the
+rain. Her eyes were closed, and a hump on the surface of the dirty quilt
+beside her showed that a child must be there. From such a picture the
+girl fled in tears. But the sight of it, and of others like it, haunted
+her for weeks. Through those last dreary days of November, wretched
+families, which a year since had been in health and prosperity, came to
+the city, beggars, with the wrecks of their homes. The history of that
+hideous pilgrimage across a state has never been written. Still they came
+by the hundred, those families. Some brought little corpses to be buried.
+The father of one, hale and strong when they started, died of pneumonia
+in the public lodging-house. The walls of that house could tell many
+tales to wring the heart. So could Mr. Brinsmade, did he choose to speak
+of his own charities. He found time, between his labors at the big
+hospital newly founded, and his correspondence, and his journeys of
+love,--between early morning and midnight,--to give some hours a day to
+the refugees.
+
+Throughout December they poured in on the afflicted city, already
+overtaxed. All the way to Springfield the road was lined with remains of
+articles once dear--a child's doll, a little rocking-chair, a colored
+print that has hung in the best room, a Bible text.
+
+Anne Brinsmade, driven by Nicodemus, went from house to house to solicit
+old clothes, and take them to the crowded place of detention. Christmas
+was drawing near--a sorry Christmas, in truth. And many of the wanderers
+were unclothed and unfed.
+
+More battles had been fought; factions had arisen among Union men.
+Another general had come to St. Louis to take charge of the Department,
+and the other with his wondrous body-guard was gone.
+
+The most serious problem confronting the new general--was how to care for
+the refugees. A council of citizens was called at headquarters, and the
+verdict went forth in the never-to-be-forgotten Orders No. 24.
+
+"Inasmuch," said the General, "as the Secession army had driven these
+people from their homes, Secession sympathizers should be made to support
+them." He added that the city was unquestionably full of these.
+
+Indignation was rife the day that order was published. Sixty prominent
+"disloyalists" were to be chosen and assessed to make up a sum of ten
+thousand dollars.
+
+"They may sell my house over my head before I will pay a cent," cried Mr.
+Russell. And he meant it. This was the way the others felt. Who were to
+be on this mysterious list of "Sixty"? That was the all-absorbing
+question of the town. It was an easy matter to pick the conspicuous ones.
+Colonel Carvel was sure to be there, and Mr. Catherwood and Mr. Russell
+and Mr. James, and Mr. Worington the lawyer. Mrs. Addison Colfax lived
+for days in a fermented state of excitement which she declared would
+break her down; and which, despite her many cares and worries, gave her
+niece not a little amusement. For Virginia was human, and one morning she
+went to her aunt's room to read this editorial from the newspaper:-- "For
+the relief of many palpitating hearts it may be well to state that we
+understand only two ladies are on the ten thousand dollar list."
+
+"Jinny," she cried, "how can you be so cruel as to read me that, when you
+know that I am in a state of frenzy now? How does that relieve me? It
+makes it an absolute certainty that Madame Jules and I will have to pay.
+We are the only women of importance in the city."
+
+That afternoon she made good her much-uttered threat, and drove to
+Bellegarde. Only the Colonel and Virginia and Mammy Easter and Ned were
+left in the big house. Rosetta and Uncle Ben and Jackson had been hired
+out, and the horses sold,--all save old Dick, who was running,
+long-haired, in the fields at Glencoe.
+
+Christmas eve was a steel-gray day, and the sleet froze as it fell. Since
+morning Colonel Carvel had sat poking the sitting-room fire, or pacing
+the floor restlessly. His occupation was gone. He was observed night and
+day by Federal detectives. Virginia strove to amuse him, to conceal her
+anxiety as she watched him. Well she knew that but for her he would long
+since have fled southward, and often in the bitterness of the night-time
+she blamed herself for not telling him to go. Ten years had seemed to
+pass over him since the war had begun.
+
+All day long she had been striving to put away from her the memory of
+Christmas eves past and gone of her father's early home-coming from the
+store, a mysterious smile on his face; of Captain Lige stamping noisily
+into the house, exchanging uproarious jests with Ned and Jackson. The
+Captain had always carried under his arm a shapeless bundle which he
+would confide to Ned with a knowing wink. And then the house would be
+lighted from top to bottom, and Mr. Russell and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.
+Brinsmade came in for a long evening with Mr. Carvel over great bowls of
+apple toddy and egg-nog. And Virginia would have her own friends in the
+big parlor. That parlor was shut up now, and icy cold.
+
+Then there was Judge Whipple, the joyous event of whose year was his
+Christmas dinner at Colonel Carvel's house. Virginia pictured him this
+year at Mrs. Brice's little table, and wondered whether he would miss
+them as much as they missed him. War may break friendships, but it cannot
+take away the sacredness of memories.
+
+The sombre daylight was drawing to an early close as the two stood
+looking out of the sitting-room window. A man's figure muffled in a
+greatcoat slanting carefully across the street caught their eyes.
+Virginia started. It was the same United States deputy marshal she had
+seen the day before at Mr. Russell's house.
+
+"Pa," she cried, "do you think he is coming here?"
+
+"I reckon so, honey."
+
+"The brute! Are you going to pay?"
+
+"No, Jinny."
+
+"Then they will take away the furniture."
+
+"I reckon they will."
+
+"Pa, you must promise me to take down the mahogany bed in your room. It
+--it was mother's. I could not bear to see them take that. Let me put it in
+the garret."
+
+The Colonel was distressed, but he spoke without a tremor.
+
+"No, Jinny. We must leave this house just as it is." Then he added,
+strangely enough for him, "God's will be done."
+
+The bell rang sharply. And Ned, who was cook and housemaid, came in with
+his apron on.
+
+"Does you want to see folks, Marse Comyn?"
+
+The Colonel rose, and went to the door himself. He was an imposing figure
+as he stood in the windy vestibule, confronting the deputy. Virginia's
+first impulse was to shrink under the stairs. Then she came out and stood
+beside her father.
+
+"Are you Colonel Carvel?"
+
+"I reckon I am. Will you come in?"
+
+The officer took off his cap. He was a young man with a smooth face, and
+a frank brown eye which paid its tribute to Virginia. He did not appear
+to relish the duty thrust upon him. He fumbled in his coat and drew from
+his inner pocket a paper.
+
+"Colonel Carvel," said he, "by order of Major General Halleck, I serve
+you with this notice to pay the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars
+for the benefit of the destitute families which the Rebels have driven
+from their homes. In default of payment within a reasonable time such
+personal articles will be seized and sold at public auction as will
+satisfy the demand against you."
+
+The Colonel took the paper. "Very well, sir," he said. "You may tell the
+General that the articles may be seized. That I will not, while in my
+right mind, be forced to support persons who have no claim upon me."
+
+It was said in the tone in which he might have refused an invitation to
+dinner. The deputy marvelled. He had gone into many houses that week; had
+seen indignation, hysterics, frenzy. He had even heard men and women
+whose sons and brothers were in the army of secession proclaim their
+loyalty to the Union. But this dignity, and the quiet scorn of the girl
+who had stood silent beside them, were new. He bowed, and casting his
+eyes to the vestibule, was glad to escape from the house.
+
+The Colonel shut the door. Then he turned toward Virginia, thoughtfully
+pulled his goatee, and laughed gently. "Lordy, we haven't got three
+hundred and fifty dollars to our names," said he.
+
+The climate of St. Louis is capricious. That fierce valley of the
+Missouri, which belches fitful blizzards from December to March, is
+sometimes quiet. Then the hot winds come up from the Gulf, and sleet
+melts, and windows are opened. In those days the streets will be fetlock
+deep in soft mud. It is neither summer, nor winter, nor spring, nor
+anything.
+
+It was such a languorous afternoon in January that a furniture van,
+accompanied by certain nondescript persons known as United States Police,
+pulled up at the curb in front of Mr. Carvel's house. Eugenie, watching
+at the window across the street, ran to tell her father, who came out on
+his steps and reviled the van with all the fluency of his French
+ancestors.
+
+Mammy Easter opened the door, and then stood with her arms akimbo, amply
+filling its place. Her lips protruded, and an expression of defiance hard
+to describe sat on her honest black face.
+
+"Is this Colonel Carvel's house?"
+
+"Yassir. I 'low you knows dat jes as well as me." An embarrassed silence,
+and then from Mammy, "Whaffor you laffin at?"
+
+"Is the Colonel at home?"
+
+"Now I reckon you knows dat he ain't. Ef he was, you ain't come here
+'quirin' in dat honey voice." (Raising her own voice.) "You tink I dunno
+whaffor you come? You done come heah to rifle, an' to loot, an' to steal,
+an' to seize what ain't your'n. You come heah when young Marse ain't to
+home ter rob him." (Still louder.) "Ned, whaffor you hidin' yonder? Ef
+yo' ain't man to protect Marse Comyn's prop-ty, jes han' over Marse
+Comyn's gun."
+
+The marshal and his men had stood, half amused, more than half baffled by
+this unexpected resistance. Mammy Easter looked so dangerous that it was
+evident she was not to be passed without extreme bodily discomfort.
+
+"Is your mistress here?"
+
+This question was unfortunate in the extreme.
+
+"You--you white trash!" cried Mammy, bursting with indignation. "Who is
+you to come heah 'quiring fo' her! I ain't agwine--"
+
+"Mammy!"
+
+"Yas'm! Yas, Miss Jinny." Mammy backed out of the door and clutched at
+her bandanna.
+
+"Mammy, what is all this noise about?" The torrent was loosed once more.
+
+"These heah men, Miss Jinny, was gwine f'r t' carry away all yo' pa's
+blongin's. I jes' tol' 'em dey ain't comin' in ovah dis heah body."
+
+The deputy had his foot on the threshold. He caught sight of the face of
+Miss Carvel within, and stopped abruptly.
+
+"I have a warrant here from the Provost Marshal, ma'am, to seize personal
+property to satisfy a claim against Colonel Carvel."
+
+Virginia took the order, read it, and handed it back. "I do not see how I
+am to prevent you," she said. The deputy was plainly abashed.
+
+"I'm sorry, Miss. I--I can't tell you how sorry I am. But it's got to be
+done."
+
+Virginia nodded coldly. And still the man hesitated. "What are you
+waiting for?" she said.
+
+The deputy wiped his muddy feet. He made his men do likewise. Then he
+entered the chill drawing-room, threw open the blinds and glanced around
+him.
+
+"I expect all that we want is right here," he said. And at the sight of
+the great chandelier, with its cut-glass crystals, he whistled. Then he
+walked over to the big English Rothfield piano and lifted the lid.
+
+The man was a musician. Involuntarily he rested himself on the mahogany
+stool, and ran his fingers over the keys. They seemed to Virginia,
+standing motionless in the ball, to give out the very chords of agony.
+
+The piano, too, had been her mother's. It had once stood in the brick
+house of her grandfather Colfax at Halcyondale. The songs of Beatrice lay
+on the bottom shelf of the what-not near by. No more, of an evening when
+they were alone, would Virginia quietly take them out and play them over
+to the Colonel, as he sat dreaming in the window with his cigar,
+--dreaming of a field on the borders of a wood, of a young girl who held
+his hand, and sang them softly to herself as she walked by his side. And,
+when they reached the house in the October twilight, she had played them
+for him on this piano. Often he had told Virginia of those days, and
+walked with her over those paths.
+
+The deputy closed the lid, and sent out to the van for a truck. Virginia
+stirred. For the first time she heard the words of Mammy Easter.
+
+"Come along upstairs wid yo' Mammy, honey. Dis ain't no place for us, I
+reckon." Her words were the essence of endearment. And yet, while she
+pronounced them, she glared unceasingly at the intruders. "Oh, de good
+Lawd'll burn de wicked!"
+
+The men were removing the carved legs. Virginia went back into the room
+and stood before the deputy.
+
+"Isn't there something else you could take? Some jewellery?" She flushed.
+"I have a necklace--"
+
+"No, miss. This warrant's on your father. And there ain't nothing quite
+so salable as pianos."
+
+She watched them, dry-eyed, as they carried it away. It seemed like a
+coffin. Only Mammy Easter guessed at the pain in Virginia's breast, and
+that was because there was a pain in her own. They took the rosewood
+what-not, but Virginia snatched the songs before the men could touch
+them, and held them in her arms. They seized the mahogany velvet-bottomed
+chairs, her uncle's wedding present to her mother; and, last of all, they
+ruthlessly tore up the Brussels carpet, beginning near the spot where
+Clarence had spilled ice-cream at one of her children's parties.
+
+She could not bear to look into the dismantled room when they had gone.
+It was the embodied wreck of her happiness. Ned closed the blinds once
+more, and she herself turned the key in the lock, and went slowly up the
+stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE AUCTION
+
+"Stephen," said the Judge, in his abrupt way, "there isn't a great deal
+doing. Let's go over to the Secesh property sales."
+
+Stephen looked up in surprise. The seizures and intended sale of
+secession property had stirred up immense bitterness and indignation in
+the city. There were Unionists (lukewarm) who denounced the measure as
+unjust and brutal. The feelings of Southerners, avowed and secret, may
+only be surmised. Rigid ostracism was to be the price of bidding on any
+goods displayed, and men who bought in handsome furniture on that day
+because it was cheap have still, after forty years, cause to remember it.
+
+It was not that Stephen feared ostracism. Anne Brinsmade was almost the
+only girl left to him from among his former circle of acquaintances. Miss
+Carvel's conduct is known. The Misses Russell showed him very plainly
+that they disapproved of his politics. The hospitable days at that house
+were over. Miss Catherwood, when they met on the street, pretended not to
+see him, and Eugenie Renault gave him but a timid nod. The loyal families
+to whose houses he now went were mostly Southerners, in sentiment against
+forced auctions.
+
+However, he put on his coat, and sallied forth into the sharp air, the
+Judge leaning on his arm. They walked for some distance in silence.
+
+"Stephen," said he, presently, "I guess I'll do a little bidding."
+
+Stephen did not reply. But he was astonished. He wondered what Mr.
+Whipple wanted with fine furniture. And, if he really wished to bid,
+Stephen knew likewise that no consideration would stop him.
+
+"You don't approve of this proceeding, sir, I suppose," said the Judge.
+
+"Yes, sir, on large grounds. War makes many harsh things necessary."
+
+"Then," said the Judge, tartly, "by bidding, we help to support starving
+Union families. You should not be afraid to bid, sir."
+
+Stephen bit his lip. Sometimes Mr. Whipple made him very angry.
+
+"I am not afraid to bid, Judge Whipple." He did not see the smile on the
+Judge's face.
+
+"Then you will bid in certain things for me," said Mr. Whipple. Here he
+hesitated, and shook free the rest of the sentence with a wrench.
+"Colonel Carvel always had a lot of stuff I wanted. Now I've got the
+chance to buy it cheap."
+
+There was silence again, for the space of a whole block. Finally, Stephen
+managed to say:-- "You'll have to excuse me, sir. I do not care to do
+that."
+
+"What?" cried the Judge, stopping in the middle of a cross-street, so
+that a wagon nearly ran over his toes.
+
+"I was once a guest in Colonel Carvel's house, sir. And--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+Neither the young man nor the old knew all it was costing the other to
+say these things. The Judge took a grim pleasure in eating his heart. And
+as for Stephen, he often went to his office through Locust Street, which
+was out of his way, in the hope that he might catch a glimpse of
+Virginia. He had guessed much of the privations she had gone through. He
+knew that the Colonel had hired out most of his slaves, and he had
+actually seen the United States Police drive across Eleventh Street with
+the piano that she had played on.
+
+The Judge was laughing quietly,--not a pleasant laugh to hear,--as they
+came to Morgan's great warerooms. A crowd blocked the pavement, and
+hustled and shoved at the doors,--roughs, and soldiers off duty, and
+ladies and gentlemen whom the Judge and Stephen knew, and some of whom
+they spoke to. All of these were come out of curiosity, that they might
+see for themselves any who had the temerity to bid on a neighbor's
+household goods. The long hall, which ran from street to street, was
+packed, the people surging backward and forward, and falling roughly
+against the mahogany pieces; and apologizing, and scolding, and swearing
+all in a breath. The Judge, holding tightly to Stephen, pushed his way
+fiercely to the stand, vowing over and over that the commotion was a
+secession trick to spoil the furniture and stampede the sale. In truth,
+it was at the Judge's suggestion that a blue provost's guard was called
+in later to protect the seized property.
+
+How many of those mahogany pieces, so ruthlessly tumbled about before the
+public eye, meant a heartache! Wedding presents of long ago, dear to many
+a bride with silvered hair, had been torn from the corner where the
+children had played--children who now, alas, were grown and gone to war.
+Yes, that was the Brussels rug that had lain before the fire, and which
+the little feet had worn in the corner. Those were the chairs the little
+hands had harnessed, four in a row, and fallen on its side was the
+armchair--the stage coach itself. There were the books, held up to common
+gaze, that a beloved parent had thumbed with affection. Yes, and here in
+another part of the hall were the family horses and the family carriage
+that had gone so often back and forth from church with the happy brood of
+children, now scattered and gone to war.
+
+As Stephen reached his place beside the Judge, Mr. James's effects were
+being cried. And, if glances could have killed, many a bidder would have
+dropped dead. The heavy dining-room table which meant so much to the
+family went for a song to a young man recently come from Yankeeland,
+whose open boast it was--like Eliphalet's secret one--that he would one
+day grow rich enough to snap his fingers in the face of the Southern
+aristocrats. Mr. James was not there. But Mr. Catherwood, his face
+haggard and drawn, watched the sideboard he had given his wife on her
+silver wedding being sold to a pawnbroker.
+
+Stephen looked in vain for Colonel Carvel--for Virginia. He did not want
+to see them there. He knew by heart the list of things which had been
+taken from their house. He understood the feeling which had sent the
+Judge here to bid them in. And Stephen honored him the more.
+
+When the auctioneer came to the Carvel list, and the well-known name was
+shouted out, the crowd responded with a stir and pressed closer to the
+stand. And murmurs were plainly heard in more than one direction.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, and ladies," said the seller, "this here is a genuine
+English Rothfield piano once belonging to Colonel Carvel, and the
+celebrated Judge Colfax of Kaintucky." He lingered fondly over the names,
+that the impression might have time to sink deep. "This here magnificent
+instrument's worth at the very least" (another pause) "twelve hundred
+dollars. What am I bid?"
+
+He struck a base note of the keys, then a treble, and they vibrated in
+the heated air of the big hall. Had he hit the little C of the top
+octave, the tinkle of that also might have been heard.
+
+"Gentlemen and ladies, we have to begin somewheres. What am I bid?"
+
+A menacing murmur gave place to the accusing silence. Some there were who
+gazed at the Rothfield with longing eyes, but who had no intention of
+committing social suicide. Suddenly a voice, the rasp of which penetrated
+to St. Charles Street, came out with a bid. The owner was a seedy man
+with a straw-colored, drunkard's mustache. He was leaning against the
+body of Mrs. Russell's barouche (seized for sale), and those about him
+shrank away as from smallpox. His hundred-dollar offer was followed by a
+hiss. What followed next Stephen will always remember. When Judge Whipple
+drew himself up to his full six feet, that was a warning to those that
+knew him. As he doubled the bid, the words came out with the aggressive
+distinctness of a man who through a long life has been used to
+opposition. He with the gnawed yellow mustache pushed himself clear of
+the barouche, his smouldering cigar butt dropping to the floor. But there
+were no hisses now.
+
+And this is how Judge Whipple braved public opinion once more. As he
+stood there, defiant, many were the conjectures as to what he could wish
+to do with the piano of his old friend. Those who knew the Judge (and
+there were few who did not) pictured to themselves the dingy little
+apartment where he lived, and smiled. Whatever his detractors might have
+said of him, no one was ever heard to avow that he had bought or sold
+anything for gain.
+
+A tremor ran through the people. Could it have been of admiration for the
+fine old man who towered there glaring defiance at those about him? "Give
+me a strong and consistent enemy," some great personage has said, "rather
+than a lukewarm friend." Three score and five years the Judge had lived,
+and now some were beginning to suspect that he had a heart. Verily he had
+guarded his secret well. But it was let out to many more that day, and
+they went home praising him who had once pronounced his name with
+bitterness.
+
+This is what happened. Before he of the yellow mustache could pick up his
+cigar from the floor and make another bid, the Judge had cried out a sum
+which was the total of Colonel Carvel's assessment. Many recall to this
+day how fiercely he frowned when the applause broke forth of itself; and
+when he turned to go they made a path for him, in admiration, the length
+of the hall, down which he stalked, looking neither to the right nor
+left. Stephen followed him, thankful for the day which had brought him
+into the service of such a man.
+
+And so it came about that the other articles were returned to Colonel
+Carvel with the marshal's compliments, and put back into the cold parlor
+where they had stood for many years. The men who brought them offered to
+put down the carpet, but by Virginia's orders the rolls were stood up in
+the corner, and the floor left bare. And days passed into weeks, and no
+sign or message came from Judge Whipple in regard to the piano he had
+bought. Virginia did not dare mention it to the Colonel.
+
+Where was it? It had been carried by six sweating negroes up the narrow
+stairs into the Judge's office. Stephen and Shadrach had by Mr. Whipple's
+orders cleared a corner of his inner office and bedroom of papers and
+books and rubbish, and there the bulky instrument was finally set up. It
+occupied one-third of the space. The Judge watched the proceeding grimly,
+choking now and again from the dust that was raised, yet uttering never a
+word. He locked the lid when the van man handed him the key, and thrust
+that in his pocket.
+
+Stephen had of late found enough to do in St. Louis. He was the kind of
+man to whom promotions came unsought, and without noise. In the autumn he
+had been made a captain in the Halleck Guards of the State Militia, as a
+reward for his indefatigable work in the armories and his knowledge of
+tactics. Twice his company had been called out at night, and once they
+made a campaign as far as the Merimec and captured a party of recruits
+who were destined for Jefferson Davis. Some weeks passed before Mr.
+Brinsmade heard of his promotion and this exploit, and yet scarcely a day
+went by that he did not see the young man at the big hospital. For
+Stephen helped in the work of the Sanitary Commission too, and so strove
+to make up in zeal for the service in the field which he longed to give.
+
+After Christmas Mr. and Mrs. Brinsmade moved out to their place on the
+Bellefontaine Road. This was to force Anne to take a rest. For the girl
+was worn out with watching at the hospitals, and with tending the
+destitute mothers and children from the ranks of the refugees. The
+Brinsmade place was not far from the Fair Grounds,--now a receiving camp
+for the crude but eager regiments of the Northern states. To Mr.
+Brinsmade's, when the day's duty was done, the young Union officers used
+to ride, and often there would be half a dozen of them to tea. That
+house, and other great houses on the Bellefontaine Road with which this
+history has no occasion to deal, were as homes to many a poor fellow who
+would never see home again. Sometimes Anne would gather together such
+young ladies of her acquaintance from the neighbor hood and the city as
+their interests and sympathies permitted to waltz with a Union officer,
+and there would be a little dance. To these dances Stephen Brice was
+usually invited.
+
+One such occasion occurred on a Friday in January, and Mr. Brinsmade
+himself called in his buggy and drove Stephen to the country early in the
+afternoon. He and Anne went for a walk along the river, the surface of
+which was broken by lumps of yellow ice. Gray clouds hung low in the sky
+as they picked their way over the frozen furrows of the ploughed fields.
+The grass was all a yellow-brown, but the north wind which swayed the
+bare trees brought a touch of color to Anne's cheeks. Before they
+realized where they were, they had nearly crossed the Bellegarde estate,
+and the house itself was come into view, standing high on the slope above
+the withered garden. They halted.
+
+"The shutters are up," said Stephen. "I understood that Mrs. Colfax had
+come out here not long a--"
+
+"She came out for a day just before Christina," said Anne, smiling, "and
+then she ran off to Kentucky. I think she was afraid that she was one of
+the two women on the list of Sixty."
+
+"It must have been a blow to her pride when she found that she was not,"
+said Stephen, who had a keen remembrance of her conduct upon a certain
+Sunday not a year gone.
+
+Impelled by the same inclination, they walked in silence to the house and
+sat down on the edge of the porch. The only motion in the view was the
+smoke from the slave quarters twisting in the wind, and the hurrying ice
+in the stream.
+
+"Poor Jinny!" said Anne, with a sigh, "how she loved to romp! What good
+times we used to have here together!"
+
+"Do you think that she is unhappy?" Stephen demanded, involuntarily.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Anne. "How can you ask? But you could not make her show
+it. The other morning when she came out to our house I found her sitting
+at the piano. I am sure there were tears in her eyes, but she would not
+let me see them. She made some joke about Spencer Catherwood running
+away. What do you think the Judge will do with that piano, Stephen?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"The day after they put it in his room he came in with a great black
+cloth, which he spread over it. You cannot even see the feet."
+
+There was a silence. And Anne, turning to him timidly, gave him a long,
+searching look.
+
+"It is growing late," she said. "I think that we ought to go back."
+
+They went out by the long entrance road, through the naked woods. Stephen
+said little. Only a little while before he had had one of those vivid
+dreams of Virginia which left their impression, but not their substance,
+to haunt him. On those rare days following the dreams her spirit had its
+mastery over his. He pictured her then with a glow on her face which was
+neither sadness nor mirth,--a glow that ministered to him alone. And yet,
+he did not dare to think that he might have won her, even if politics and
+war had not divided them.
+
+When the merriment of the dance was at its height that evening, Stephen
+stood at the door of the long room, meditatively watching the bright
+gowns and the flash of gold on the uniforms as they flitted past.
+Presently the opposite door opened, and he heard Mr. Brinsmade's voice
+mingling with another, the excitable energy of which recalled some
+familiar episode. Almost--so it seemed--at one motion, the owner of the
+voice had come out of the door and had seized Stephen's hand in a warm
+grasp,--a tall and spare figure in the dress of a senior officer. The
+military frock, which fitted the man's character rather than the man, was
+carelessly open, laying bare a gold-buttoned white waistcoat and an
+expanse of shirt bosom which ended in a black stock tie. The ends of the
+collar were apart the width of the red clipped beard, and the mustache
+was cropped straight along the line of the upper lip. The forehead rose
+high, and was brushed carelessly free of the hair. The nose was almost
+straight, but combative. A fire fairly burned in the eyes.
+
+"The boy doesn't remember me," said the gentleman, in quick tones,
+smiling at Mr. Brinsmade.
+
+"Yes, sir, I do," Stephen made haste to answer. He glanced at the star on
+the shoulder strap, and said. "You are General Sherman."
+
+"First rate!" laughed the General, patting him. "First rate!"
+
+"Now in command at Camp Benton, Stephen," Mr. Brinsmade put in. "Won't
+you sit down, General?"
+
+"No," said the General, emphatically waving away the chair. "No, rather
+stand." Then his keen face suddenly lighted with amusement,--and
+mischief, Stephen thought. "So you've heard of me since we met, sir?"
+"Yes, General."
+
+"Humph! Guess you heard I was crazy," said the General, in his downright
+way.
+
+Stephen was struck dumb.
+
+"He's been reading the lies in the newspapers too, Brinsmade," the
+General went on rapidly. "I'll make 'em eat their newspapers for saying I
+was crazy. That's the Secretary of War's doings. Ever tell you what
+Cameron did, Brinsmade? He and his party were in Louisville last fall,
+when I was serving in Kentucky, and came to my room in the Galt House.
+Well, we locked the door, and Miller sent us up a good lunch and wine,
+After lunch, the Secretary lay on my bed, and we talked things over. He
+asked me what I thought about things in Kentucky. I told him. I got a
+map. I said, 'Now, Mr. Secretary, here is the whole Union line from the
+Potomac to Kansas. Here's McClellan in the East with one hundred miles of
+front. Here's Fremont in the West with one hundred miles. Here we are in
+Kentucky, in the centre, with three hundred miles to defend. McClellan
+has a hundred thousand men, Fremont has sixty thousand. You give us
+fellows with over three hundred miles only eighteen thousand.' 'How many
+do you want?' says Cameron, still on the bed. 'Two hundred thousand
+before we get through,' said I. Cameron pitched up his hands in the air.
+'Great God?' says he, 'where are they to come from?' 'The northwest is
+chuck full of regiments you fellows at Washington won't accept,' said I.
+'Mark my words, Mr. Secretary, you'll need 'em all and more before we get
+done with this Rebellion.' Well, sir, he was very friendly before we
+finished, and I thought the thing was all thrashed out. No, sir! he goes
+back to Washington and gives it out that I'm crazy, and want two hundred
+thousand men in Kentucky. Then I am ordered to report to Halleck in
+Missouri here, and he calls me back from Sedalia because he believes the
+lies."
+
+Stephen, who had in truth read the stories in question a month or two
+before, could not conceal his embarrassment He looked at the man in front
+of him,--alert, masterful intelligent, frank to any stranger who took his
+fancy,--and wondered how any one who had talked to him could believe
+them.
+
+Mr. Brinsmade smiled. "They have to print something, General," he said.
+
+"I'll give 'em something to print later on," answered the General,
+grimly. Then his expression changed. "Brinsmade, you fellows did have a
+session with Fremont, didn't you? Anderson sent me over here last
+September, and the first man I ran across at the Planters' House was
+Appleton. '--What are you in town for?' says he. 'To see Fremont,' I
+said. You ought to have heard Appleton laugh. 'You don't think Fremont'll
+see you, do you?' says he. 'Why not?' 'Well,' says Tom, 'go 'round to his
+palace at six to-morrow morning and bribe that Hungarian prince who runs
+his body-guard to get you a good place in the line of senators and
+governors and first citizens, and before nightfall you may get a sight of
+him, since you come from Anderson. Not one man in a hundred,' says
+Appleton, I not one man in a hundred, reaches his chief-of-staff.' Next
+morning," the General continued in a staccato which was often his habit,
+"had breakfast before daybreak and went 'round there. Place just swarming
+with Californians--army contracts." (The General sniffed.) Saw Fremont.
+Went back to hotel. More Californians, and by gad--old Baron Steinberger
+with his nose hanging over the register."
+
+"Fremont was a little difficult to get at, General," said Mr. Brinsmade.
+"Things were confused and discouraged when those first contracts were
+awarded. Fremont was a good man, and it wasn't his fault that the
+inexperience of his quartermasters permitted some of those men to get
+rich."
+
+"No," said the General. "His fault! Certainly not. Good man! To be sure
+he was--didn't get along with Blair. These court-martials you're having
+here now have stirred up the whole country. I guess we'll hear now how
+those fortunes were made. To listen to those witnesses lie about each
+other on the stand is better than the theatre."
+
+Stephen laughed at the comical and vivid manner in which the General set
+this matter forth. He himself had been present one day of the sittings of
+the court-martial when one of the witnesses on the prices of mules was
+that same seedy man with the straw-colored mustache who had bid for
+Virginia's piano against the Judge.
+
+"Come, Stephen," said the General, abruptly, "run and snatch one of those
+pretty girls from my officers. They're having more than their share."
+
+"They deserve more, sir," answered Stephen. Whereupon the General laid
+his hand impulsively on the young man's shoulder, divining what Stephen
+did not say.
+
+"Nonsense!" said be; "you are doing the work in this war, not we. We do
+the damage--you repair it. If it were not for Mr. Brinsmade and you
+gentlemen who help him, where would our Western armies be? Don't you go
+to the front yet a while, young man. We need the best we have in
+reserve." He glanced critically at Stephen. "You've had military training
+of some sort?"
+
+"He's a captain in the Halleck Guards, sir," said Mr. Brinsmade,
+generously, "and the best drillmaster we've had in this city. He's seen
+service, too, General."
+
+Stephen reddened furiously and started to protest, when the General
+cried:-- "It's more than I have in this war. Come, come, I knew he was a
+soldier. Let's see what kind of a strategist he'll make. Brinsmade, have
+you got such a thing as a map?" Mr. Brinsmade had, and led the way back
+into the library. The General shut the door, lighted a cigar with a
+single vigorous stroke of a match, and began to smoke with quick puffs.
+Stephen was puzzled how to receive the confidences the General was giving
+out with such freedom.
+
+When the map was laid on the table, the General drew a pencil from his
+pocket and pointed to the state of Kentucky. Then he drew a line from
+Columbus to Bowling Green, through Forts Donelson and Henry.
+
+"Now, Stephen," said he, "there's the Rebel line. Show me the proper
+place to break it."
+
+Stephen hesitated a while, and then pointed at the centre.
+
+"Good!" said the General. "Very good!" He drew a heavy line across the
+first, and it ran almost in the bed of the Tennessee River. He swung on
+Mr. Brinsmade. "Very question Halleck asked me the other day, and that's
+how I answered it. Now, gentlemen, there's a man named Grant down in that
+part of the country. Keep your eyes on him. Ever heard of him, Brinsmade?
+He used to live here once, and a year ago he was less than I was. Now
+he's a general."
+
+The recollection of the scene in the street by the Arsenal that May
+morning not a year gone came to Stephen with a shock.
+
+"I saw him," he cried; "he was Captain Grant that lived on the Gravois
+Road. But surely this can't be the same man who seized Paducah and was in
+that affair at Belmont."
+
+"By gum!" said the General, laughing. "Don't wonder you're surprised.
+Grant has stuff in him. They kicked him around Springfield awhile, after
+the war broke out, for a military carpet-bagger. Then they gave him for a
+regiment the worst lot of ruffians you ever laid eyes on. He fixed 'em.
+He made 'em walk the plank. He made 'em march halfway across the state
+instead of taking the cars the Governor offered. Belmont! I guess he is
+the man that chased the Rebs out of Belmont. Then his boys broke loose
+when they got into the town. That wasn't Grant's fault. The Rebs came
+back and chased 'em out into their boats on the river. Brinsmade, you
+remember hearing about that.
+
+"Grant did the coolest thing you ever saw. He sat on his horse at the top
+of the bluff while the boys fell over each other trying to get on the
+boat. Yes, sir, he sat there, disgusted, on his horse, smoking a cigar,
+with the Rebs raising pandemonium all around him. And then, sir," cried
+the General, excitedly, "what do you think he did? Hanged if he didn't
+force his horse right on to his haunches, slide down the whole length of
+the bank and ride him across a teetering plank on to the steamer. And the
+Rebs just stood on the bank and stared. They were so astonished they
+didn't even shoot the man. You watch Grant," said the General. "And now,
+Stephen," he added, "just you run off and take hold of the prettiest girl
+you can find. If any of my boys object, say I sent you."
+
+The next Monday Stephen had a caller. It was little Tiefel, now a first
+lieutenant with a bristly beard and tanned face, come to town on a few
+days' furlough. He had been with Lyon at Wilson's Creek, and he had a sad
+story to tell of how he found poor Richter, lying stark on that bloody
+field, with a smile of peace upon his face. Strange that he should at
+length have been killed by a sabre!
+
+It was a sad meeting for those two, since each reminded the other of a
+dear friend they would see no more on earth. They went out to sup
+together in the German style; and gradually, over his beer, Tiefel forgot
+his sorrow. Stephen listened with an ache to the little man's tales of
+the campaigns he had been through. So that presently Tiefel cried out:
+
+"Why, my friend, you are melancholy as an owl. I will tell you a funny
+story. Did you ever hear of one General Sherman? He that they say is
+crazy?"
+
+"He is no more crazy than I am," said Stephen, warmly--
+
+"Is he not?" answered Tiefel, "then I will show you a mistake. You recall
+last November he was out to Sedalia to inspect the camp there, and he
+sleeps in a little country store where I am quartered. Now up gets your
+General Sherman in the middle of the night,--midnight,--and marches up
+and down between the counters, and waves his arms. So, says he, 'land
+so,' says he, 'Sterling Price will be here, and Steele here, and this
+column will take that road, and so-and-so's a damned fool. Is not that
+crazy? So he walks up and down for three eternal hours. Says he, 'Pope
+has no business to be at Osterville, and Steele here at Sedalia with his
+regiments all over the place. They must both go into camp at La Mine
+River, and form brigades and divisions, that the troops may be handled.'"
+
+"If that's insanity," cried Stephen so strongly as to surprise the little
+man; "then I wish we had more insane generals. It just shows how a
+malicious rumor will spread. What Sherman said about Pope's and Steele's
+forces is true as Gospel, and if you ever took the trouble to look into
+that situation, Tiefel, you would see it." And Stephen brought down his
+mug on the table with a crash that made the bystanders jump.
+
+"Himmel!" exclaimed little Tiefel. But he spoke in admiration.
+
+It was not a month after that that Sherman's prophecy of the quiet
+general who had slid down the bluff at Belmont came true. The whole
+country bummed with Grant's praises. Moving with great swiftness and
+secrecy up the Tennessee, in company with the gunboats of Commodore
+Foote, he had pierced the Confederate line at the very point Sherman had
+indicated. Fort Henry had fallen, and Grant was even then moving to
+besiege Donelson.
+
+Mr. Brinsmade prepared to leave at once for the battlefield, taking with
+him too Paducah physicians and nurses. All day long the boat was loading
+with sanitary stores and boxes of dainties for the wounded. It was muggy
+and wet--characteristic of that winter--as Stephen pushed through the
+drays on the slippery levee to the landing.
+
+He had with him a basket his mother had put up. He also bore a message to
+Mr. Brinsmade from the Judge It was while he was picking his way along
+the crowded decks that he ran into General Sherman. The General seized
+him unceremoniously by the shoulder.
+
+"Good-by, Stephen," he said.
+
+"Good-by, General," said Stephen, shifting his basket to shake hands.
+"Are you going away?"
+
+"Ordered to Paducah," said the General. He pulled Stephen off the guards
+into an empty cabin. "Brice," said he, earnestly, "I haven't forgotten
+how you saved young Brinsmade at Camp Jackson. They tell me that you are
+useful here. I say, don't go in unless you have to. I don't mean force,
+you understand. But when you feel that you can go in, come to me or write
+me a letter. That is," he added, seemingly inspecting Stephen's white
+teeth with approbation, "if you're not afraid to serve under a crazy
+man."
+
+It has been said that the General liked the lack of effusiveness of
+Stephen's reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ELIPHALET PLAYS HIS TRUMPS
+
+Summer was come again. Through interminable days, the sun beat down upon
+the city; and at night the tortured bricks flung back angrily the heat
+with which he had filled them. Great battles had been fought, and vast
+armies were drawing breath for greater ones to come.
+
+"Jinny," said the Colonel one day, "as we don't seem to be much use in
+town, I reckon we may as well go to Glencoe."
+
+Virginia, threw her arms around her father's neck. For many months she
+had seen what the Colonel himself was slow to comprehend--that his
+usefulness was gone. The days melted into weeks, and Sterling Price and
+his army of liberation failed to come. The vigilant Union general and his
+aides had long since closed all avenues to the South. For, one fine
+morning toward the end of the previous summer, when the Colonel was
+contemplating a journey, he had read that none might leave the city
+without a pass, whereupon he went hurriedly to the office of the Provost
+Marshal. There he had found a number of gentlemen in the same plight,
+each waving a pass made out by the Provost Marshal's clerks, and waiting
+for that officer's signature. The Colonel also procured one of these, and
+fell into line. The Marshal gazed at the crowd, pulled off his coat, and
+readily put his name to the passes of several gentlemen going east. Next
+came Mr. Bub Ballington, whom the Colonel knew, but pretended not to.
+
+"Going to Springfield?" asked the Marshal, genially.
+
+"Yes," said Bub.
+
+"Not very profitable to be a minute-man, eh?" in the same tone.
+
+The Marshal signs his name, Mr, Ballington trying not to look indignant
+as he makes for the door. A small silver bell rings on the Marshal's
+desk, the one word: "Spot!" breaks the intense silence, which is one way
+of saying that Mr. Ballington is detained, and will probably be lodged
+that night at Government expense.
+
+"Well, Colonel Carvel, what can I do for you this morning?" asked the
+Marshal, genially.
+
+The Colonel pushed back his hat and wiped his brow. "I reckon I'll wait
+till next week, Captain," said Mr. Carvel. "It's pretty hot to travel
+just now."
+
+The Provost Marshal smiled sweetly. There were many in the office who
+would have liked to laugh, but it did not pay to laugh at some people.
+Colonel Carvel was one of them.
+
+In the proclamation of martial law was much to make life less endurable
+than ever. All who were convicted by a court-martial of being rebels were
+to have property confiscated, and slaves set free. Then there was a
+certain oath to be taken by all citizens who did not wish to have
+guardians appointed over their actions. There were many who swallowed
+this oath and never felt any ill effects. Mr. Jacob Cluyme was one, and
+came away feeling very virtuous. It was not unusual for Mr. Cluyme to
+feel virtuous. Mr. Hopper did not have indigestion after taking it, but
+Colonel Carvel would sooner have eaten, gooseberry pie, which he had
+never tasted but once.
+
+That summer had worn away, like a monster which turns and gives hot gasps
+when you think it has expired. It took the Arkansan just a month, under
+Virginia's care, to become well enough to be sent to a Northern prison He
+was not precisely a Southern gentleman, and he went to sleep over the
+"Idylls of the King." But he was admiring, and grateful, and wept when he
+went off to the boat with the provost's guard, destined for a Northern
+prison. Virginia wept too. He had taken her away from her aunt (who would
+have nothing to do with him), and had given her occupation. She nor her
+father never tired of hearing his rough tales of Price's rough army.
+
+His departure was about the time when suspicions were growing set. The
+favor had caused comment and trouble, hence there was no hope of giving
+another sufferer the same comfort. The cordon was drawn tighter. One of
+the mysterious gentlemen who had been seen in the vicinity of Colonel
+Carvel's house was arrested on the ferry, but he had contrived to be rid
+of the carpet-sack in which certain precious letters were carried.
+
+Throughout the winter, Mr. Hopper's visits to Locust Street had continued
+at intervals of painful regularity. It is not necessary to dwell upon his
+brilliant powers of conversation, nor to repeat the platitudes which he
+repeated, for there was no significance in Mr. Hopper's tales, not a
+particle. The Colonel had found that out, and was thankful. His manners
+were better; his English decidedly better.
+
+It was for her father's sake, of course, that Virginia bore with him.
+Such is the appointed lot of women. She tried to be just, and it occurred
+to her that she had never before been just. Again and again she repeated
+to herself that Eliphalet's devotion to the Colonel at this low ebb of
+his fortunes had something in it of which she did not suspect him. She
+had a class contempt for Mr. Hopper as an uneducated Yankee and a person
+of commercial ideals. But now he was showing virtues,--if virtues they
+were,--and she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. With his great
+shrewdness and business ability, why did he not take advantage of the
+many opportunities the war gave to make a fortune? For Virginia had of
+late been going to the store with the Colonel,--who spent his mornings
+turning over piles of dusty papers, and Mr. Hopper had always been at his
+desk.
+
+After this, Virginia even strove to be kind to him, but it was uphill
+work. The front door never closed after one of his visits that suspicion
+was not left behind. Antipathy would assert itself. Could it be that
+there was a motive under all this plotting? He struck her inevitably as
+the kind who would be content to mine underground to attain an end. The
+worst she could think of him was that he wished to ingratiate himself
+now, in the hope that, when the war was ended, he might become a partner
+in Mr. Carvel's business. She had put even this away as unworthy of her.
+
+Once she had felt compelled to speak to her father on the subject.
+
+"I believe I did him an injustice, Pa," she said. "Not that I like him
+any better now. I must be honest about that. I simply can't like him. But
+I do think that if he had been as unscrupulous as I thought, he would
+have deserted you long ago for something more profitable. He would not be
+sitting in the office day after day making plans for the business when
+the war is over."
+
+She remembered how sadly he had smiled at her over the top of his paper.
+
+"You are a good girl, Jinny," he said.
+
+Toward the end of July of that second summer riots broke out in the city,
+and simultaneously a bright spot appeared on Virginia's horizon. This
+took the form, for Northerners, of a guerilla scare, and an order was
+promptly issued for the enrollment of all the able-bodied men in the ten
+wards as militia, subject to service in the state, to exterminate the
+roving bands. Whereupon her Britannic Majesty became extremely popular,
+--even with some who claimed for a birthplace the Emerald Isle. Hundreds
+who heretofore had valued but lightly their British citizenship made
+haste to renew their allegiance; and many sought the office of the
+English Consul whose claims on her Majesty's protection were vague, to
+say the least. Broken heads and scandal followed. For the first time,
+when Virginia walked to the store with her father, Eliphalet was not
+there. It was strange indeed that Virginia defended him.
+
+"I don't blame him for not wanting to fight for the Yankees," she said.
+
+The Colonel could not resist a retort.
+
+"Then why doesn't he fight for the South he asked"
+
+"Fight for the South!" cried the young lady, scornfully. "Mr. Hopper
+fight? I reckon the South wouldn't have him."
+
+"I reckon not, too," said the Colonel, dryly.
+
+For the following week curiosity prompted Virginia to take that walk with
+the Colonel. Mr. Hopper being still absent, she helped him to sort the
+papers--those grimy reminders of a more prosperous time gone by. Often
+Mr. Carvel would run across one which seemed to bring some incident to
+his mind; for he would drop it absently on his desk, his hand seeking his
+chin, and remain for half an hour lost in thought. Virginia would not
+disturb him.
+
+Meanwhile there had been inquiries for Mr. Hopper. The Colonel answered
+them all truthfully--generally with that dangerous suavity for which he
+was noted. Twice a seedy man with a gnawed yellow mustache had come in to
+ask Eliphalet's whereabouts. On the second occasion this individual
+became importunate.
+
+"You don't know nothin' about him, you say?" he demanded.
+
+"No," said the Colonel.
+
+The man took a shuffle forward.
+
+"My name's Ford," he said. "I 'low I kin 'lighten you a little."
+
+"Good day, sir," said the Colonel.
+
+"I guess you'll like to hear what I've got to say."
+
+"Ephum," said Mr. Carvel in his natural voice, "show this man out."
+
+Mr. Ford slunk out without Ephum's assistance. But he half turned at the
+door, and shot back a look that frightened Virginia.
+
+"Oh, Pa," she cried, in alarm, "what did he mean?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you, Jinny," he answered. But she noticed that he was
+very thoughtful as they walked home. The next morning Eliphalet had not
+returned, but a corporal and guard were waiting to search the store for
+him. The Colonel read the order, and invited them in with hospitality. He
+even showed them the way upstairs, and presently Virginia heard them all
+tramping overhead among the bales. Her eye fell upon the paper they had
+brought, which lay unfolded on her father's desk. It was signed Stephen
+A. Brice, Enrolling Officer.
+
+That very afternoon they moved to Glencoe, and Ephum was left in sole
+charge of the store. At Glencoe, far from the hot city and the cruel war,
+began a routine of peace. Virginia was a child again, romping in the
+woods and fields beside her father. The color came back to her cheeks
+once more, and the laughter into her voice. The two of them, and Ned and
+Mammy, spent a rollicking hour in the pasture the freedom of which Dick
+had known so long, before the old horse was caught and brought back into
+bondage. After that Virginia took long drives with her father, and coming
+home, they would sit in the summer house high above the Merimec,
+listening to the crickets' chirp, and watching the day fade upon the
+water. The Colonel, who had always detested pipes, learned to smoke a
+corncob. He would sit by the hour, with his feet on the rail of the porch
+and his hat tilted back, while Virginia read to him. Poe and Wordsworth
+and Scott he liked, but Tennyson was his favorite. Such happiness could
+not last.
+
+One afternoon when Virginia was sitting in the summer house alone, her
+thoughts wandering back, as they sometimes did, to another afternoon she
+had spent there,--it seemed so long ago,--when she saw Mammy Easter
+coming toward her.
+
+"Honey, dey's comp'ny up to de house. Mister Hopper's done arrived. He's
+on de porch, talkin' to your Pa. Lawsey, look wha he come!"
+
+In truth, the solid figure of Eliphalet himself was on the path some
+twenty yards behind her. His hat was in his hand; his hair was plastered
+down more neatly than ever, and his coat was a faultless and sober
+creation of a Franklin Avenue tailor. He carried a cane, which was
+unheard of. Virginia sat upright, and patted her skirts with a gesture of
+annoyance--what she felt was anger, resentment. Suddenly she rose, swept
+past Mammy, and met him ten paces from the summer house.
+
+"How-dy-do, Miss Virginia," he cried pleasantly. "Your father had a
+notion you might be here." He said fayther.
+
+Virginia gave him her hand limply. Her greeting would have frozen a man
+of ardent temperament. But it was not precisely ardor that Eliphalet
+showed. The girl paused and examined him swiftly. There was something in
+the man's air to-day.
+
+"So you were not caught?" she said.
+
+Her words seemed to relieve some tension in him. He laughed noiselessly.
+
+"I just guess I wahn't."
+
+"How did you escape?" she asked, looking at him curiously.
+
+"Well, I did, first of all. You're considerable smart, Miss Jinny, but
+I'll bet you can't tell me where I was, now."
+
+"I do not care to know. The place might save you again."
+
+He showed his disappointment. "I cal'lated it might interest you to know
+how I dodged the Sovereign State of Missouri. General Halleck made an
+order that released a man from enrolling on payment of ten dollars. I
+paid. Then I was drafted into the Abe Lincoln Volunteers; I paid a
+substitute. And so here I be, exercising life, and liberty, and the
+pursuit of happiness."
+
+"So you bought yourself free?" said Virginia. "If your substitute gets
+killed, I suppose you will have cause for congratulation."
+
+Eliphalet laughed, and pulled down his cuffs. "That's his lookout, I
+cal'late," said he. He glanced at the girl in a way that made her vaguely
+uneasy. She turned from him, back toward the summer house. Eliphalet's
+eyes smouldered as they rested upon her figure. He took a step forward.
+
+"Miss Jinny?" he said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I've heard considerable about the beauties of this place. Would you mind
+showing me 'round a bit?" Virginia started. It was his tone now. Not
+since that first evening in Locust Street had it taken on such assurance,
+And yet she could not be impolite to a guest.
+
+"Certainly not," she replied, but without looking up. Eliphalet led the
+way. He came to the summer house, glanced around it with apparent
+satisfaction, and put his foot on the moss-grown step. Virginia did a
+surprising thing. She leaped quickly into the doorway before him, and
+stood facing him, framed in the climbing roses.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hopper!" she cried. "Please, not in here." He drew back, staring
+in astonishment at the crimson in her face.
+
+"Why not?" he asked suspiciously--almost brutally. She had been groping
+wildly for excuses, and found none.
+
+"Because," she said, "because I ask you not to." With dignity: "That
+should be sufficient."
+
+"Well," replied Eliphalet, with an abortive laugh, "that's funny, now.
+Womenkind get queer notions, which I cal'late we've got to respect and
+put up with all our lives--eh?"
+
+Her anger flared at his leer and at his broad way of gratifying her whim.
+And she was more incensed than ever at his air of being at home--it was
+nothing less.
+
+The man's whole manner was an insult. She strove still to hide her
+resentment.
+
+"There is a walk along the bluff," she said, coldly, "where the view is
+just as good."
+
+But she purposely drew him into the right-hand path, which led, after a
+little, back to the house. Despite her pace he pressed forward to her
+side.
+
+"Miss Jinny," said he, precipitately, "did I ever strike you as a
+marrying man?"
+
+Virginia stopped, and put her handkerchief to her face, the impulse
+strong upon her to laugh. Eliphalet was suddenly transformed again into
+the common commercial Yankee. He was in love, and had come to ask her
+advice. She might have known it.
+
+"I never thought of you as of the marrying kind, Mr. Hopper," she
+answered, her voice quivering.
+
+Indeed, he was irresistibly funny as he stood hot and ill at ease. The
+Sunday coat bore witness to his increasing portliness by creasing across
+from the buttons; his face, fleshy and perspiring, showed purple veins,
+and the little eyes receded comically, like a pig's.
+
+"Well, I've been thinking serious of late about getting married," he
+continued, slashing the rose bushes with his stick. "I don't cal'late to
+be a sentimental critter. I'm not much on high-sounding phrases, and such
+things, but I'd give you my word I'd make a good husband."
+
+"Please be careful of those roses, Mr. Hopper."
+
+"Beg pardon," said Eliphalet. He began to lose track of his tenses--that
+was the only sign he gave of perturbation. "When I come to St. Louis
+without a cent, Miss Jinny, I made up my mind I'd be a rich man before I
+left it. If I was to die now, I'd have kept that promise. I'm not
+thirty-four, and I cal'late I've got as much money in a safe place as a
+good many men you call rich. I'm not saying what I've got, mind you. All
+in proper time.
+
+"I'm a pretty steady kind. I've stopped chewing--there was a time when I
+done that. And I don't drink nor smoke."
+
+"That is all very commendable, Mr. Hopper," Virginia said, stifling a
+rebellious titter. "But,--but why did you give up chewing?"
+
+"I am informed that the ladies are against it," said Eliphalet,--"dead
+against it. You wouldn't like it in a husband, now, would you?"
+
+This time the laugh was not to be put down. "I confess I shouldn't," she
+said.
+
+"Thought so," he replied, as one versed. His tones took on a nasal twang.
+"Well, as I was saying, I've about got ready to settle down, and I've had
+my eye on the lady this seven years."
+
+"Marvel of constancy!" said Virginia. "And the lady?"
+
+"The lady," said Eliphalet, bluntly, "is you." He glanced at her
+bewildered face and went on rapidly: "You pleased me the first day I set
+eyes on you in the store I said to myself, 'Hopper, there's the one for
+you to marry.' I'm plain, but my folks was good people. I set to work
+right then to make a fortune for you, Miss Jinny. You've just what I
+need. I'm a plain business man with no frills. You'll do the frills.
+You're the kind that was raised in the lap of luxury. You'll need a man
+with a fortune, and a big one; you're the sort to show it off. I've got
+the foundations of that fortune, and the proof of it right here. And I
+tell you,"--his jaw was set,--"I tell you that some day Eliphalet Hopper
+will be one of the richest men in the West."
+
+He had stopped, facing her in the middle of the way, his voice strong,
+his confidence supreme. At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder.
+Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was
+still dominant,--sheer astonishment. She scarcely listened. But, as he
+finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye. A vision arose
+of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl. She thought of
+Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal
+seemed a degradation. This brute dared to tempt her with money. Scalding
+words rose to her lips. But she caught the look on Eliphalet's face, and
+she knew that he would not understand. This was one who rose and fell,
+who lived and loved and hated and died and was buried by--money.
+
+For a second she looked into his face as one who escapes a pit gazes over
+the precipice, and shuddered. As for Eliphalet, let it not be thought
+that he had no passion. This was the moment for which he had lived since
+the day he had first seen her and been scorned in the store. That type of
+face, that air,--these were the priceless things he would buy with his
+money. Crazed with the very violence of his long-pent desire, he seized
+her hand. She wrung it free again.
+
+"How--how dare you!" she cried.
+
+He staggered back, and stood for a moment motionless, as though stunned.
+Then, slowly, a light crept into his little eyes which haunted her for
+many a day.
+
+"You--won't--marry me?" he said.
+
+"Oh, how dare you ask me!" exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with the
+shame of it. She was standing with her hands behind her, her back against
+a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over the bluff.
+Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and indiscretion
+entered his soul.
+
+"You must!" he said hoarsely. "You must! You've got no notion of my
+money, I say."
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "can't you understand? If you owned the whole of
+California, I would not marry you." Suddenly he became very cool. He
+slipped his hand into a pocket, as one used to such a motion, and drew
+out some papers.
+
+"I cal'late you ain't got much idea of the situation, Miss Carvel," he
+said; "the wheels have been a-turning lately. You're poor, but I guess
+you don't know how poor you are,--eh? The Colonel's a man of honor, ain't
+he?"
+
+For her life she could not have answered,--nor did she even know why she
+stayed to listen.
+
+"Well," he said, "after all, there ain't much use in your lookin' over
+them papers. A woman wouldn't know. I'll tell you what they say: they say
+that if I choose, I am Carvel & Company."
+
+The little eyes receded, and he waited a moment, seemingly to prolong a
+physical delight in the excitement and suffering of a splendid creature.
+The girl was breathing fast and deep.
+
+"I cal'late you despise me, don't you?" he went on, as if that, too, gave
+him pleasure. "But I tell you the Colonel's a beggar but for me. Go and
+ask him if I'm lying. All you've got to do is to say you'll be my wife,
+and I tear these notes in two. They go over the bluff." (He made the
+motion with his hands.) "Carvel & Company's an old firm,--a respected
+firm. You wouldn't care to see it go out of the family, I cal'late."
+
+He paused again, triumphant. But she did none of the things he expected.
+She said, simply:--"Will you please follow me, Mr. Hopper."
+
+And he followed her,--his shrewdness gone, for once.
+
+Save for the rise and fall of her shoulders she seemed calm. The path
+wound through a jungle of waving sunflowers and led into the shade in
+front of the house. There was the Colonel sitting on the porch. His pipe
+lay with its scattered ashes on the boards, and his head was bent
+forward, as though listening. When he saw the two, he rose expectantly,
+and went forward to meet them. Virginia stopped before him.
+
+"Pa," she said, "is it true that you have borrowed money from this man?"
+
+Eliphalet had seen Mr. Carvel angry once, and his soul had quivered.
+Terror, abject terror, seized him now, so that his knees smote together.
+As well stare into the sun as into the Colonel's face. In one stride he
+had a hand in the collar of Eliphalet's new coat, the other pointing down
+the path.
+
+"It takes just a minute to walk to that fence, sir," he said sternly. "If
+you are any longer about it, I reckon you'll never get past it. You're a
+cowardly hound, sir!" Mr. Hopper's gait down the flagstones was an
+invention of his own. It was neither a walk, nor a trot, nor a run, but a
+sort of sliding amble, such as is executed in nightmares. Singing in his
+head was the famous example of the eviction of Babcock from the store,
+--the only time that the Colonel's bullet had gone wide. And down in the
+small of his back Eliphalet listened for the crack of a pistol, and
+feared that a clean hole might be bored there any minute. Once outside,
+he took to the white road, leaving a trail of dust behind him that a
+wagon might have raised. Fear lent him wings, but neglected to lift his
+feet.
+
+The Colonel passed his arm around his daughter, and pulled his goatee
+thoughtfully. And Virginia, glancing shyly upward, saw a smile in the
+creases about his mouth: She smiled, too, and then the tears hid him from
+her.
+
+Strange that the face which in anger withered cowards and made men look
+grave, was capable of such infinite tenderness,--tenderness and sorrow.
+The Colonel took Virginia in his arms, and she sobbed against his
+shoulder, as of old.
+
+"Jinny, did he--?"
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"Lige was right, and--and you, Jinny--I should never have trusted him.
+The sneak!"
+
+Virginia raised her head. The sun was slanting in yellow bars through the
+branches of the great trees, and a robin's note rose above the bass
+chorus of the frogs. In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she
+could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.
+
+"Honey," said the Colonel,--"I reckon we're just as poor as white trash."
+
+Virginia smiled through her tears.
+
+"Honey," he said again, after a pause, "I must keep my word and let him
+have the business."
+
+She did not reproach him.
+
+"There is a little left, a very little," he continued slowly, painfully.
+"I thank God that it is yours. It was left you by Becky--by your mother.
+It is in a railroad company in New York, and safe, Jinny."
+
+"Oh, Pa, you know that I do not care," she cried. "It shall be yours and
+mine together. And we shall live out here and be happy."
+
+But she glanced anxiously at him nevertheless. He was in his familiar
+posture of thought, his legs slightly apart, his felt hat pushed back,
+stroking his goatee. But his clear gray eyes were troubled as they sought
+hers, and she put her hand to her breast.
+
+"Virginia," he said, "I fought for my country once, and I reckon I'm some
+use yet awhile. It isn't right that I should idle here, while the South
+needs me, Your Uncle Daniel is fifty-eight, and Colonel of a Pennsylvania
+regiment.--Jinny, I have to go."
+
+Virginia said nothing. It was in her blood as well as his. The Colonel
+had left his young wife, to fight in Mexico; he had come home to lay
+flowers on her grave. She knew that he thought of this; and, too, that
+his heart was rent at leaving her. She put her hands on his shoulders,
+and he stooped to kiss her trembling lips.
+
+They walked out together to the summer-house, and stood watching the
+glory of the light on the western hills. "Jinn," said the Colonel, "I
+reckon you will have to go to your Aunt Lillian. It--it will be hard. But
+I know that my girl can take care of herself. In case--in case I do not
+come back, or occasion should arise, find Lige. Let him take you to your
+Uncle Daniel. He is fond of you, and will be all alone in Calvert House
+when the war is over. And I reckon that is all I have to say. I won't pry
+into your heart, honey. If you love Clarence, marry him. I like the boy,
+and I believe he will quiet down into a good man."
+
+Virginia did not answer, but reached out for her father's hand and held
+its fingers locked tight in her own. From the kitchen the sound of Ned's
+voice rose in the still evening air.
+
+     "Sposin' I was to go to N' Orleans an' take sick and die,
+     Laik a bird into de country ma spirit would fly."
+
+And after a while down the path the red and yellow of Mammy Easter's
+bandanna was seen.
+
+"Supper, Miss Jinny. Laws, if I ain't ramshacked de premises fo' you bof.
+De co'n bread's gittin' cold."
+
+That evening the Colonel and Virginia thrust a few things into her little
+leather bag they had chosen together in London. Virginia had found a
+cigar, which she hid until they went down to the porch, and there she
+gave it to him; when he lighted the match she saw that his hand shook.
+
+Half an hour later he held her in his arms at the gate, and she heard his
+firm tread die in the dust of the road. The South had claimed him at
+last.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Crisis, Volume 6, by Winston Churchill
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+The Project Gutenberg Ebook The Crisis, Volume 6, by Winston Churchill
+WC#56 in our series by Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston)
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
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+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+Title: The Crisis, Volume 6.
+
+Author: Winston Churchill (USA author, not Sir Winston Churchill)
+
+Release Date: March, 2004  [EBook #5393]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on June 28, 2002]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRISIS, V6, BY CHURCHILL ***
+
+
+
+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
+file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
+entire meal of them.  D.W.]
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CRISIS
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+Volume 6.
+
+
+I.        Introducing a Capitalist
+II.       News From Clarence
+III.      The Scourge of War,
+IV.       The List of Sixty
+V.        The Auction
+VI.       Eliphalet Plays His Trumps
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+INTRODUCING A CAPITALIST
+
+A cordon of blue regiments surrounded the city at first from Carondelet
+to North St. Louis, like an open fan.  The crowds liked best to go to
+Compton Heights, where the tents of the German citizen-soldiers were
+spread out like so many slices of white cake on the green beside the
+city's reservoir.  Thence the eye stretched across the town, catching the
+dome of the Court House and the spire of St. John's.  Away to the west,
+on the line of the Pacific railroad that led halfway across the state,
+was another camp.  Then another, and another, on the circle of the fan,
+until the river was reached to the northward, far above the bend.  Within
+was a peace that passed understanding,--the peace of martial law.
+
+Without the city, in the great state beyond, an irate governor had
+gathered his forces from the east and from the west.  Letters came and
+went between Jefferson City and Jefferson Davis, their purport being that
+the Governor was to work out his own salvation, for a while at least.
+Young men of St. Louis, struck in a night by the fever of militarism,
+arose and went to Glencoe.  Prying sergeants and commissioned officers,
+mostly of hated German extraction, thundered at the door of Colonel
+Carvel's house, and other houses, there--for Glencoe was a border town.
+They searched the place more than once from garret to cellar, muttered
+guttural oaths, and smelled of beer and sauerkraut, The haughty
+appearance of Miss Carvel did not awe them--they were blind to all manly
+sensations.  The Colonel's house, alas, was one of many in Glencoe
+written down in red ink in a book at headquarters as a place toward which
+the feet of the young men strayed.  Good evidence was handed in time and
+time again that the young men had come and gone, and red-faced commanding
+officers cursed indignant subalterns, and implied that Beauty had had a
+hand in it.  Councils of war were held over the advisability of seizing
+Mr. Carvel's house at Glencoe, but proof was lacking until one rainy
+night in June a captain and ten men spurred up the drive and swung into a
+big circle around the house.  The Captain took off his cavalry gauntlet
+and knocked at the door, more gently than usual.  Miss Virginia was home
+so Jackson said.  The Captain was given an audience more formal than one
+with the queen of Prussia could have been, Miss Carvel was infinitely
+more haughty than her Majesty.  Was not the Captain hired to do a
+degrading service?  Indeed, he thought so as he followed her about the
+house and he felt like the lowest of criminals as he opened a closet door
+or looked under a bed.  He was a beast of the field, of the mire.  How
+Virginia shrank from him if he had occasion to pass her!  Her gown would
+have been defiled by his touch.  And yet the Captain did not smell of
+beer, nor of sauerkraut; nor did he swear in any language.  He did his
+duty apologetically, but he did it.  He pulled a man (aged seventeen) out
+from under a great hoop skirt in a little closet, and the man had a
+pistol that refused its duty when snapped in the Captain's face.  This
+was little Spencer Catherwood, just home from a military academy.
+
+Spencer was taken through the rain by the chagrined Captain to the
+headquarters, where he caused a little embarrassment.  No damning
+evidence was discovered on his person, for the pistol had long since
+ceased to be a firearm.  And so after a stiff lecture from the Colonel
+he was finally given back into the custody of his father.  Despite the
+pickets, the young men filtered through daily,--or rather nightly.
+Presently some of them began to come back, gaunt and worn and tattered,
+among the grim cargoes that were landed by the thousands and tens of
+thousands on the levee.  And they took them (oh, the pity of it!) they
+took them to Mr. Lynch's slave pen, turned into a Union prison of
+detention, where their fathers and grandfathers had been wont to send
+their disorderly and insubordinate niggers.  They were packed away, as
+the miserable slaves had been, to taste something of the bitterness of
+the negro's lot.  So came Bert Russell to welter in a low room whose
+walls gave out the stench of years.  How you cooked for them, and schemed
+for them, and cried for them, you devoted women of the South!  You spent
+the long hot summer in town, and every day you went with your baskets to
+Gratiot Street, where the infected old house stands, until--until one
+morning a lady walked out past the guard, and down the street.  She was
+civilly detained at the corner, because she wore army boots.  After that
+permits were issued.  If you were a young lady of the proper principles
+in those days, you climbed a steep pair of stairs in the heat, and stood
+in line until it became your turn to be catechised by an indifferent
+young officer in blue who sat behind a table and smoked a horrid cigar.
+He had little time to be courteous.  He was not to be dazzled by a bright
+gown or a pretty face; he was indifferent to a smile which would have won
+a savage.  His duty was to look down into your heart, and extract
+therefrom the nefarious scheme you had made to set free the man you loved
+ere he could be sent north to Alton or Columbus.  My dear, you wish to
+rescue him, to disguise him, send him south by way of Colonel Carvel's
+house at Glencoe.  Then he will be killed.  At least, he will have died
+for the South.
+
+First politics, and then war, and then more politics, in this our
+country.  Your masterful politician obtains a regiment, and goes to war,
+sword in hand.  He fights well, but he is still the politician.  It was
+not a case merely of fighting for the Union, but first of getting
+permission to fight.  Camp Jackson taken, and the prisoners exchanged
+south, Captain Lyon; who moved like a whirlwind, who loved the Union
+beyond his own life, was thrust down again.  A mutual agreement was
+entered into between the Governor and the old Indian fighter in command
+of the Western Department, to respect each other.  A trick for the
+Rebels.  How Lyon chafed, and paced the Arsenal walks while he might have
+saved the state.  Then two gentlemen went to Washington, and the next
+thing that happened was Brigadier General Lyon, Commander of the
+Department of the West.
+
+Would General Lyon confer with the Governor of Missouri?  Yes, the
+General would give the Governor a safe-conduct into St. Louis, but his
+Excellency must come to the General.  His Excellency came, and the
+General deigned to go with the Union leader to the Planters House.
+Conference, five hours; result, a safe-conduct for the Governor back.
+And this is how General Lyon ended the talk.  His words, generously
+preserved by a Confederate colonel who accompanied his Excellency,
+deserve to be writ in gold on the National Annals.
+
+"Rather than concede to the state of Missouri the right to demand that my
+Government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops
+into the state whenever it pleases; or move its troops at its own will
+into, out of, or through, the state; rather than concede to the state of
+Missouri for one single instant the right to dictate to my Government in
+any matter, however unimportant, I would" (rising and pointing in turn to
+every one in the room) "see you, and you, and you, and you, and every
+man, woman, and child in this state, dead and buried."  Then, turning to
+the Governor, he continued, "This means war.  In an hour one of my
+officers will call for you and conduct you out of my lines."
+
+And thus, without another word, without an inclination of the head, he
+turned upon his heel and strode out of the room, rattling his spurs and
+clanking his sabre.
+
+It did mean war.  In less than two months that indomitable leader was
+lying dead beside Wilson's Creek, among the oaks on Bloody Hill.  What he
+would have been to this Union, had God spared him, we shall never know.
+He saved Missouri, and won respect and love from the brave men who fought
+against him.
+
+Those first fierce battles in the state!  What prayers rose to heaven,
+and curses sank to hell, when the news of them came to the city by the
+river!  Flags were made by loving fingers, and shirts and bandages.
+Trembling young ladies of Union sympathies presented colors to regiments
+on the Arsenal Green, or at Jefferson Barracks, or at Camp Benton to the
+northwest near the Fair Grounds.  And then the regiments marched through
+the streets with bands playing that march to which the words of the
+Battle Hymn were set, and those bright ensigns snapping at the front;
+bright now, and new, and crimson.  But soon to be stained a darker red,
+and rent into tatters, and finally brought back and talked over and cried
+over, and tenderly laid above an inscription in a glass case, to be
+revered by generations of Americans to confer  What can stir the soul
+more than the sight of those old flags, standing in ranks like the
+veterans they are, whose duty has been nobly done?  The blood of the
+color-sergeant is there, black now with age.  But where are the tears of
+the sad women who stitched the red and the white and the blue together?
+
+The regiments marched through the streets and aboard the boats, and
+pushed off before a levee of waving handkerchiefs and nags.  Then heart-
+breaking suspense.  Later--much later, black headlines, and grim lists
+three columns long,--three columns of a blanket sheet!  "The City of
+Alton has arrived with the following Union dead and wounded, and the
+following Confederate wounded (prisoners)."  Why does the type run
+together?
+
+In a never-ceasing procession they steamed up the river; those calm boats
+which had been wont to carry the white cargoes of Commerce now bearing
+the red cargoes of war.  And they bore away to new battlefields thousands
+of fresh-faced boys from Wisconsin and Michigan and Minnesota, gathered
+at Camp Benton.  Some came back with their color gone and their red
+cheeks sallow and bearded and sunken.  Others came not back at all.
+
+Stephen Brice, with a pain over his heart and a lump in his throat,
+walked on the pavement beside his old company, but his look avoided their
+faces.  He wrung Richter's hand on the landing-stage.  Richter was now a
+captain.  The good German's eyes were filled as he said good-by.
+
+"You will come, too, my friend, when the country needs you," he said.
+"Now" (and he shrugged his shoulders), "now have we many with no cares to
+go.  I have not even a father--"  And he turned to Judge Whipple, who was
+standing by, holding out a bony hand.
+
+"God bless you, Carl," said the Judge  And Carl could scarce believe his
+ears.  He got aboard the boat, her decks already blue with troops, and as
+she backed out with her whistle screaming, the last objects he saw were
+the gaunt old man and the broad-shouldered young man side by side on the
+edge of the landing.
+
+Stephen's chest heaved, and as he walked back to the office with the
+Judge, he could not trust himself to speak.  Back to the silent office
+where the shelves mocked them.  The Judge closed the ground-glass door
+behind him, and Stephen sat until five o'clock over a book.  No, it was
+not Whittlesey, but Hardee's "Tactics."  He shut it with a slam, and went
+to Verandah Hall to drill recruits on a dusty floor,--narrow-chested
+citizens in suspenders, who knew not the first motion in right about
+face.  For Stephen was an adjutant in the Home Guards--what was left of
+them.
+
+One we know of regarded the going of the troops and the coming of the
+wounded with an equanimity truly philosophical.  When the regiments
+passed Carvel & Company on their way riverward to embark, Mr. Hopper did
+not often take the trouble to rise from his chair, nor was he ever known
+to go to the door to bid them Godspeed.  This was all very well, because
+they were Union regiments.  But Mr. Hopper did not contribute a horse,
+nor even a saddle-blanket, to the young men who went away secretly in the
+night, without fathers or mothers or sisters to wave at them.  Mr. Hopper
+had better use for his money.
+
+One scorching afternoon in July Colonel Carvel came into the office, too
+hurried to remark the pain in honest Ephum's face as he watched his
+master.  The sure signs of a harassed man were on the Colonel.  Since May
+he had neglected his business affairs for others which he deemed public,
+and which were so mysterious that even Mr. Hopper could not get wind of
+them.  These matters had taken the Colonel out of town.  But now the
+necessity of a pass made that awkward, and he went no farther than
+Glencoe, where he spent an occasional Sunday.  Today Mr. Hopper rose from
+his chair when Mr. Carvel entered,--a most unprecedented action.  The
+Colonel cleared his throat.  Sitting down at his desk, he drummed upon it
+uneasily.
+
+"Mr. Hopper!" he said at length.
+
+Eliphalet crossed the room quickly, and something that was very near a
+smile was on his face.  He sat down close to Mr. Carvel's chair with a
+semi-confidential air,--one wholly new, had the Colonel given it a
+thought.  He did not, but began to finger some printed slips of paper
+which had indorsements on their backs.  His fine lips were tightly
+closed, as if in pain.
+
+"Mr. Hopper," he said, "these Eastern notes are due this week, are they
+not?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The Colonel glanced up swiftly.
+
+"There is no use mincing matters, Hopper.  You know as well as I that
+there is no money to pay them," said he, with a certain pompous attempt
+at severity which characterized his kind nature.  "You have served me
+well.  You have brought this business up to a modern footing, and made
+it as prosperous as any in the town.  I am sorry, sir, that those
+contemptible Yankees should have forced us to the use of arms, and cut
+short many promising business careers such as yours, sir.  But we have
+to face the music.  We have to suffer for our principles.
+
+"These notes cannot be met, Mr. Hopper."  And the good gentleman looked
+out of the window.  He was thinking of a day, before the Mexican War,
+when his young wife had sat in the very chair filled by Mr. Hopper now.
+"These notes cannot be met," he repeated, and his voice was near to
+breaking.
+
+The flies droning in the hot office made the only sound.  Outside the
+partition, among the bales, was silence.
+
+"Colonel," said Mr. Hopper, with a remarkable ease, "I cal'late these
+notes can be met."
+
+The Colonel jumped as if he had heard a shot, and one of the notes fell
+to the floor.  Eliphalet picked it up tenderly, and held it.
+
+"What do you mean, sir?"  Mr. Carvel cried.  "There isn't a bank in town
+that will lend me money.  I--I haven't a friend--a friend I may ask who
+can spare it, sir."
+
+Mr. Hopper lifted up his hand.  It was a fat hand.  Suavity was come upon
+it like a new glove and changed the man.  He was no longer cringing.  Now
+he had poise, such poise as we in these days are accustomed to see in
+leather and mahogany offices.  The Colonel glared at him uncomfortably.
+
+"I will take up those notes myself, sir."
+
+"You!" cried the Colonel, incredulously, "You?"
+
+We must do Eliphalet justice.  There was not a deal of hypocrisy in his
+nature, and now he did not attempt the part of Samaritan.  He did not
+beam upon the Colonel and remind him of the day on which, homeless and
+friendless, he had been frightened into his store by a drove of mules.
+No.  But his day,--the day toward which he had striven unknown and
+unnoticed for so many years--the day when he would laugh at the pride of
+those who had ignored and insulted him, was dawning at last.  When we are
+thoughtless of our words, we do not reckon with that spark in little
+bosoms that may burst into flame and burn us.  Not that Colonel Carvel
+had ever been aught but courteous and kind to all.  His station in life
+had been his offence to Eliphalet, who strove now to hide an exultation
+that made him tremble.
+
+"What do you mean, sir?" demanded the Colonel, again.
+
+"I cal'late that I can gather together enough to meet the notes, Colonel.
+Just a little friendly transaction."  Here followed an interval of sheer
+astonishment to Mr. Carvel.
+
+"You have this money?" he said at length.  Mr. Hopper nodded.
+
+"And you will take my note for the amount?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The Colonel pulled his goatee, and sat back in his chair, trying to face
+the new light in which he saw his manager.  He knew well enough that the
+man was not doing this out of charity, or even gratitude.  He reviewed
+his whole career, from that first morning when he had carried bales to
+the shipping room, to his replacement of Mr. Hood, and there was nothing
+with which to accuse him.  He remembered the warnings of Captain Lige and
+Virginia.  He could not in honor ask a cent from the Captain now.  He
+would not ask his sister-in-law, Mrs. Colfax, to let him touch the money
+he had so ably invested for her; that little which Virginia's mother had
+left the girl was sacred.
+
+Night after night Mr. Carvel had lain awake with the agony of those
+Eastern debts.  Not to pay was to tarnish the name of a Southern
+gentleman.  He could not sell the business.  His house would bring
+nothing in these times.  He rose and began to pace the floor, tugging
+at his chin.  Twice he paused to stare at Mr. Hopper, who sat calmly on,
+and the third time stopped abruptly before him.
+
+"See here," he cried.  "Where the devil did you get this money, sir?"
+
+Mr. Hopper did not rise.
+
+"I haven't been extravagant, Colonel, since I've worked for you," he
+said.  "It don't cost me much to live.  I've been fortunate in
+investments."
+
+The furrows in the Colonel's brow deepened.
+
+"You offer to lend me five times more than I have ever paid you, Mr.
+Hopper.  Tell me how you have made this money before I accept it."
+
+Eliphalet had never been able to meet that eye since he had known it.  He
+did not meet it now.  But he went to his desk, and drew a long sheet of
+paper from a pigeonhole.
+
+"These be some of my investments," he answered, with just a tinge of
+surliness.  "I cal'late they'll stand inspection.  I ain't forcing you
+to take the money, sir," he flared up, all at once.  "I'd like to save
+the business."
+
+Mr. Carvel was disarmed.  He went unsteadily to his desk, and none save
+God knew the shock that his pride received that day.  To rescue a name
+which had stood untarnished since he had brought it into the world, he
+drew forth some blank notes, and filled them out.  But before he signed
+them he spoke:
+
+"You are a business man, Mr. Hopper," said he, "And as a business man you
+must know that these notes will not legally hold.  It is martial law.
+The courts are abolished, and all transactions here in St.  Louis are
+invalid."
+
+Eliphalet was about to speak.
+
+"One moment, sir," cried the Colonel, standing up and towering to his
+full height.  "Law or no law, you shall have the money and interest, or
+your security, which is this business.  I need not tell you, sir, that my
+word is sacred, and binding forever upon me and mine."
+
+"I'm not afraid, Colonel," answered Mr. Hopper, with a feeble attempt at
+geniality.  He was, in truth, awed at last.
+
+"You need not be, sir!" said the Colonel, with equal force.  "If you were
+--this instant you should leave this place."  He sat down, and continued
+more calmly: "It will not be long before a Southern Army marches into St.
+Louis, and the Yankee Government submits."  He leaned forward.  "Do you
+reckon we can hold the business together until then, Mr. Hopper?"
+
+God forbid that we should smile at the Colonel's simple faith.  And if
+Eliphalet Hopper had done so, his history would have ended here.
+
+"Leave that to me, Colonel," he said soberly.
+
+Then came the reaction.  The good Colonel sighed as he signed, away that
+business which had been an honor to the, city where it was founded,  I
+thank heaven that we are not concerned with the details of their talk
+that day.  Why should we wish to know the rate of interest on those
+notes, or the time?  It was war-time.
+
+Mr. Hopper filled out his check, and presently departed.  It was the
+signal for the little force which remained to leave.  Outside, in the
+store; Ephum paced uneasily, wondering why his master did not come out.
+Presently he crept to the door of the office, pushed it open, and beheld
+Mr. Carvel with his head bowed, down in his hands.
+
+"Marse Comyn!" he cried, "Marse Comyn!"
+
+The Colonel looked up.  His face was haggard.
+
+"Marse Comyn, you know what I done promise young MISS long time ago,
+befo'--befo' she done left us?"
+
+"Yes, Ephum."
+
+He saw the faithful old negro but dimly.  Faintly he heard the pleading
+voice.
+
+"Marse Comyn, won' you give Ephum a pass down, river, ter fotch Cap'n
+Lige?"
+
+"Ephum," said the Colonel, sadly, "I had a letter from the Captain
+yesterday.  He is at Cairo.  His boat is a Federal transport, and he is
+in Yankee pay."
+
+Ephum took a step forward, appealingly, "But de Cap'n's yo' friend, Marse
+Comyn.  He ain't never fo'get what you done fo' him, Marse Comyn.  He
+ain't in de army, suh."
+
+"And I am the Captain's friend, Ephum," answered the Colonel, quietly.
+"But I will not ask aid from any man employed by the Yankee Government.
+No--not from my own brother, who is in a Pennsylvania regiments."
+
+Ephum shuffled out, and his heart was lead as he closed the store that
+night.
+
+
+Mr. Hopper has boarded a Fifth Street car, which jangles on with many
+halts until it comes to Bremen, a German settlement in the north of the
+city.  At Bremen great droves of mules fill the street, and crowd the
+entrances of the sale stables there.  Whips are cracking like pistol
+shots,  Gentlemen with the yellow cavalry stripe of the United States
+Army are pushing to and fro among the drivers and the owners, and
+fingering the frightened animals.  A herd breaks from the confusion and
+is driven like a whirlwind down the street, dividing at the Market House.
+They are going to board the Government transport--to die on the
+battlefields of Kentucky and Missouri.
+
+Mr. Hopper alights from the car with complacency.  He stands for a while
+on a corner, against the hot building, surveying the busy scene,
+unnoticed.  Mules!  Was it not a prophecy,--that drove which sent him
+into Mr. Carvel's store?
+
+Presently a man with a gnawed yellow mustache and a shifty eye walks out
+of one of the offices, and perceives our friend.
+
+"Howdy, Mr. Hopper?" says he.
+
+Eliphalet extends a hand to be squeezed and returned.  "Got them
+vouchers?"  he asks.  He is less careful of his English here.
+
+"Wal, I jest reckon," is the answer:  The fellow was interrupted by the
+appearance of a smart young man in a smart uniform, who wore an air of
+genteel importance.  He could not have been more than two and twenty, and
+his face and manners were those of a clerk.  The tan of field service was
+lacking on his cheek, and he was black under the eyes.
+
+"Hullo, Ford," he said, jocularly.
+
+"Howdy, Cap," retorted the other.  "Wal, suh, that last lot was an extry,
+fo' sure.  As clean a lot as ever I seed.  Not a lump on 'em.  Gov'ment
+ain't cheated much on them there at one-eighty a head, I reckon."
+
+Mr. Ford said this with such an air of conviction and such a sober face
+that the Captain smiled.  And at the same time he glanced down nervously
+at the new line of buttons on his chest,
+
+"I guess I know a mule from a Newfoundland dog by this time," said he.
+
+"Wal, I jest reckon," asserted Mr. Ford, with a loud laugh.  "Cap'n
+Wentworth, allow me to make you acquainted with Mr. Hopper.  Mr. Hopper,
+Cap'n Wentworth."
+
+The Captain squeezed Mr. Hoppers hand with fervor.  "You interested in
+mules, Mr. Hopper?"  asked the military man.
+
+"I don't cal'late to be," said.  Mr. Hopper.  Let us hope that our worthy
+has not been presented as being wholly without a sense of humor.  He
+grinned as he looked upon this lamb in the uniform of Mars, and added,
+"I'm just naturally patriotic, I guess.  Cap'n, 'll you have a drink?"
+
+"And a segar," added Mr. Ford.
+
+"Just one," says the Captain.  "It's d--d tiresome lookin' at mules all
+day in the sun."
+
+Well for Mr. Davitt that his mission work does not extend to Bremen, that
+the good man's charity keeps him at the improvised hospital down town.
+Mr. Hopper has resigned the superintendency of his Sunday School, it is
+true, but he is still a pillar of the church.
+
+The young officer leans against the bar, and listens to stories by Mr.
+Ford, which it behooves no church members to hear.  He smokes Mr.
+Hopper's cigar and drinks his whiskey.  And Eliphalet understands that
+the good Lord put some fools into the world in order to give the smart
+people a chance to practise their talents.  Mr. Hopper neither drinks nor
+smokes, but he uses the spittoon with more freedom in this atmosphere.
+
+When at length the Captain has marched out, with a conscious but manly
+air, Mr. Hopper turns to Ford--
+
+"Don't lose no time in presenting them vouchers at headquarters," says
+he.  "Money is worth something now.  And there's grumbling about this
+Department in the Eastern papers,  If we have an investigation, we'll
+whistle.  How much to-day?"
+
+"Three thousand," says Mr. Ford.  He tosses off a pony of Bourbon, but
+his face is not a delight to look upon, "Hopper, you'll be a d--d rich
+man some day."
+
+"I cal'late to."
+
+"I do the dirty work.  And because I ain't got no capital, I only get
+four per cent."
+
+"Don't one-twenty a day suit you?"
+
+"You get blasted near a thousand.  And you've got horse contracts, and
+blanket contracts besides.  I know you.  What's to prevent my goin' south
+when the vouchers is cashed?" he cried.  "Ain't it possible?"
+
+"I presume likely," said Mr. Hopper, quietly.  "Then your mother'll have
+to move out of her little place."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+NEWS FROM CLARENCE
+
+The epithet aristocrat may become odious and fatal on the banks of the
+Mississippi as it was on the banks of the Seine.  Let no man deceive
+himself!  These are fearful times.  Thousands of our population, by the
+sudden stoppage of business, are thrown out of employment.  When gaunt
+famine intrudes upon their household, it is but natural that they should
+inquire the cause.  Hunger began the French Revolution.
+
+Virginia did not read this editorial, because it appeared in that
+abhorred organ of the Mudsills, the 'Missouri Democrat.'  The wheels of
+fortune were turning rapidly that first hot summer of the war time.  Let
+us be thankful that our flesh and blood are incapable of the fury of
+the guillotine.  But when we think calmly of those days, can we escape
+without a little pity for the aristocrats?  Do you think that many of
+them did not know hunger and want long before that cruel war was over?
+
+How bravely they met the grim spectre which crept so insidiously into
+their homes!
+
+"Virginia, child."  said Mrs. Colfax, peevishly, one morning as they sat
+at breakfast, "why do you persist it wearing that old gown?  It has
+gotten on my nerves, my dear.  You really must have something new made,
+even if there are no men here to dress for."
+
+"Aunt Lillian, you must not say such things.  I do not think that I ever
+dressed to please men."
+
+"Tut, tut; my dear, we all do.  I did, even after married your uncle.  It
+is natural.  We must not go shabby in such times as these, or be out of
+fashion,  Did you know that Prince Napoleon was actually coming here for
+a visit this autumn?  We must be ready for him.  I am having a fitting at
+Miss Elder's to-day."
+
+Virginia was learning patience.  She did not reply as she poured out her
+aunt's coffee.
+
+"Jinny," said that lady, "come with me to Elder's, and I will give you
+some gowns.  If Comyn had been as careful of his own money as of mine,
+you could dress decently."
+
+"I think I do dress decently, Aunt Lillian," answered the girl.  "I do
+not need the gowns.  Give me the money you intend to pay for them, and
+I can use it for a better purpose."
+
+Mrs. Colfax arranged her lace pettishly.
+
+"I am sick and tired of this superiority, Jinny."  And in the same
+breath.  "What would you do with it?"
+
+Virginia lowered her voice.  "Hodges goes through the lines to-morrow
+night.  I should send it to Clarence."  "But you have no idea where
+Clarence is."
+
+"Hodges can find him."
+
+"Pshaw!" exclaimed her aunt, "I would not trust him.  How do you know
+that he will get through the Dutch pickets to Price's army?  Wasn't
+Souther captured last week, and that rash letter of Puss Russell's to
+Jack Brinsmade published in the Democrat?"  She laughed at the
+recollection, and Virginia was fain to laugh too.  "Puss hasn't been
+around much since.  I hope that will cure her of saying what she thinks
+of people."
+
+"It won't," said Virginia.
+
+"I'll save my money until Price drives the Yankees from the state, and
+Clarence marches into the city at the head of a regiment," Mrs. Colfax
+went on, "It won't be long now."
+
+Virginia's eyes flashed.
+
+"Oh, you can't have read the papers.  And don't you remember the letter
+Maude had from George?  They need the bare necessities of life, Aunt
+Lillian.  And half of Price's men have no arms at all."
+
+"Jackson," said Mrs. Colfax, "bring me a newspaper.  Is there any news
+to-day?"
+
+"No," answered Virginia, quickly.  "All we know is that Lyon has left
+Springfield to meet our troops, and that a great battle is coming,
+Perhaps--perhaps it is being fought to-day."
+
+Mrs. Colfax burst into tears,
+
+"Oh, Jinny," she cried, "how can you be so cruel!"
+
+That very evening a man, tall and lean, but with the shrewd and kindly
+eye of a scout, came into the sitting-room with the Colonel and handed a
+letter to Mrs. Colfax.  In the hall he slipped into Virginia's hand
+another, in a "Jefferson  Davis" envelope, and she thrust it in her gown
+--the girl was on fire as he whispered in her ear that he had seen
+Clarence, and that he was well.  In two days an answer might be left at
+Mr. Russell's house.  But she must be careful what she wrote, as the
+Yankee scouts were active.
+
+Clarence, indeed, had proven himself a man.  Glory and uniform became him
+well, but danger and deprivation better.  The words he had written,
+careless and frank and boyish, made Virginia's heart leap with pride.
+Mrs. Colfax's letter began with the adventure below the Arsenal, when
+the frail skiff had sunk near the island, He told how he had heard the
+captain of his escort sing out to him in the darkness, and how he had
+floated down the current instead, until, chilled and weary, he had
+contrived to seize the branches of a huge tree floating by.  And how by a
+miracle the moon had risen.  When the great Memphis packet bore down upon
+him, he had, been seen from her guards, and rescued and made much of; and
+set ashore at the next landing, for fear her captain would get into
+trouble.  In the morning he had walked into the country, first providing
+himself with butternuts and rawhide boots and a bowie-knife.  Virginia
+would never have recognized her dashing captain of dragoons in this
+guise.
+
+The letter was long for Clarence, and written under great difficulties
+from date to date.  For nearly a month he had tramped over mountains
+and across river bottoms, waiting for news of an organized force of
+resistance in Missouri.  Begging his way from cabin to cabin, and living
+on greasy bacon and corn pone, at length he crossed the swift Gasconade
+(so named by the French settlers because of its brawling ways) where the
+bridge of the Pacific railroad had been blown up by the Governor's
+orders.  Then he learned that the untiring Lyon had steamed up the
+Missouri and had taken possession of Jefferson City without a blow, and
+that the ragged rebel force had fought and lost at Booneville.  Footsore,
+but undaunted, he pushed on to join the army, which he heard was
+retreating southward along the western tier of counties of the state.
+
+On the banks of the Osage he fell in with two other young amen in as bad
+a plight as himself.  They travelled together, until one day some rough
+farmers with shotguns leaped out of a bunch of willows on the borders of
+a creek and arrested all three for Union spies.  And they laughed when
+Mr. Clarence tried to explain that he had not long since been the dapper
+captain of the State Dragoons.
+
+His Excellency, the Governor of Missouri (so acknowledged by all good
+Southerners), likewise laughed when Mr. Colfax and the two others were
+brought before him.  His Excellency sat in a cabin surrounded by a camp
+which had caused the dogs of war to howl for very shame.
+
+"Colfax!" cried  the  Governor.  "A  Colfax  of  St. Louis in butternuts
+and rawhide boots?"
+
+"Give me a razor," demanded Clarence, with indignation, "a razor and a
+suit of clothes, and I will prove it."  The Governor laughed once more.
+
+"A razor, young man!  A suit of clothes  You know not what you ask."
+
+"Are there any gentlemen from St. Louis here?"  George Catherwood was
+brought in,--or rather what had once been George.  Now he was a big
+frontiersman with a huge blond beard, and a bowie, knife stuck into his
+trousers in place of a sword.  He recognized his young captain of
+dragoons  the Governor apologized, and Clarence slept that night in the
+cabin.  The next day he was given a horse, and a bright new rifle which
+the Governor's soldiers had taken from the Dutch at Cole Camp on the way
+south,  And presently they made a junction with three thousand more who
+were their images.  This was Price's army, but Price had gone ahead into
+Kansas to beg the great McCulloch and his Confederates to come to their
+aid and save the state.
+
+     "Dear mother, I wish that you and Jinny and Uncle Comyn could have
+     seen this country rabble.  How you would have laughed, and cried,
+     because we are just like them.  In the combined army two thousand
+     have only bowie-knives or clubs.  Some have long rifles of Daniel
+     Boone's time, not fired for thirty years.  And the impedimenta are a
+     sight.  Open wagons and conestogas and carryalls and buggies, and
+     even barouches, weighted down with frying-pans and chairs and
+     feather beds.  But we've got spirit, and we can whip Lyon's Dutchmen
+     and Yankees just as we are.  Spirit is what counts, and the Yankees
+     haven't got it,  I was made to-day a Captain of Cavalry under
+     Colonel Rives.  I ride a great, raw-boned horse like an elephant.
+     He jolts me until I am sore,--not quite as easy as my thoroughbred,
+     Jefferson.  Tell Jinny to care for him, and have him ready when we
+     march into St. Louis."
+
+
+                                   "COWSKIN PRAIRIE, 9th July.
+
+     "We have whipped Sigel on the prairie by Coon Creek and killed--we
+     don't know how many.  Tell Maude that George distinguished himself
+     in the fight.  We cavalry did not get a chance.
+
+     "We have at last met McCulloch and his real soldiers.  We cheered
+     until we cried when we saw their ranks of gray, with the gold
+     buttons and the gold braid and the gold stars.  General McCulloch
+     has taken me on his staff, and promised me a uniform.  But how to
+     clothe and feed and arm our men!  We have only a few poor cattle,
+     and no money.  But our men don't complain.  We shall whip the
+     Yankees before we starve."
+
+
+For many days Mrs. Colfax did not cease to bewail the hardship which her
+dear boy was forced to endure.  He, who was used to linen sheets and
+eider down, was without rough blanket or shelter; who was used to the
+best table in the state, was reduced to husks.
+
+"But, Aunt Lillian," cried Virginia, "he is fighting for the South.  If
+he were fed and clothed like the Yankees, we should not be half so proud
+of him."
+
+Why set down for colder gaze the burning words that Clarence wrote to
+Virginia.  How she pored over that letter, and folded it so that even the
+candle-droppings would not be creased and fall away!  He was happy,
+though wretched because he could not see her.  It was the life he had
+longed for.  At last (and most pathetic!) he was proving his usefulness
+in this world.  He was no longer the mere idler whom she had chidden.
+
+     "Jinny, do you remember saying so many years ago that our ruin would
+     come of our not being able to work?  How I wish you could see us
+     felling trees to make bullet-moulds, and forging slugs for canister,
+     and making cartridges at night with our bayonets as candlesticks.
+     Jinny dear, I know that you will keep up your courage.  I can see
+     you sewing for us, I can hear you praying for us."
+
+It was, in truth, how Virginia learned to sew.  She had always detested
+it.  Her fingers were pricked and sore weeks after she began.  Sad to
+relate, her bandages, shirts, and havelocks never reached the front,--
+those havelocks, to withstand the heat of the tropic sun, which were made
+in thousands by devoted Union women that first summer of the war, to be
+ridiculed as nightcaps by the soldiers.
+
+"Why should not our soldiers have them, too?" said Virginia to the
+Russell girls.  They were never so happy as when sewing on them against
+the arrival of the Army of Liberation, which never came.
+
+The long, long days of heat dragged slowly, with little to cheer those
+families separated from their dear ones by a great army.  Clarence might
+die, and a month--perhaps a year--pass without news, unless he were
+brought a prisoner to St. Louis.  How Virginia envied Maude because the
+Union lists of dead and wounded would give her tidings of her brother
+Tom, at least!  How she coveted the many Union families, whose sons and
+brothers were at the front, this privilege!
+
+We were speaking of the French Revolution, when, as Balzac remarked, to
+be a spy was to be a patriot.  Heads are not so cheap in our Anglo-Saxon
+countries;  passions not so fierce and uncontrollable.  Compare, with a
+prominent historian, our Boston Massacre and St. Bartholomew.
+
+They are both massacres.  Compare Camp Jackson, or Baltimore, where a few
+people were shot, with some Paris street scenes after the Bastille.
+Feelings in each instance never ran higher.  Our own provost marshal was
+hissed in the street, and called "Robespierre," and yet he did not fear
+the assassin's knife.  Our own Southern aristocrats were hemmed in in a
+Union city (their own city).  No women were thrown into prison, it is
+true.  Yet one was not permitted to shout for Jeff Davis on the street
+corner before the provost's guard.  Once in a while a detachment of the
+Home Guards, commanded by a lieutenant; would march swiftly into a street
+and stop before a house, whose occupants would run to the rear, only to
+encounter another detachment in the alley.
+
+One day, in great excitement, Eugenie Renault rang the bell of the Carvel
+house, and ran past the astounded Jackson up the stairs to Virginia's
+room, the door of which she burst open.
+
+"Oh, Jinny!" she cried, "Puss Russell's house is surrounded by Yankees,
+and Puss and Emily and all the family are prisoners!"
+
+"Prisoners!  What for?"  said Virginia, dropping in her excitement her
+last year's bonnet, which she was trimming with red, white, and red.
+
+"Because," said Eugenie, sputtering with indignation "because they waved
+at some of our poor fellows who were being taken to the slave pen.  They
+were being marched past Mr. Russell's house under guard--Puss had a
+small--"
+
+"Confederate flag," put in Virginia, smiling in spite of herself.
+
+"And she waved it between the shutters," Eugenie continued.  And some one
+told, the provost marshal.  He has had the house surrounded, and the
+family have to stay there."
+
+"But if the food gives out?"
+
+"Then," said Miss Renault, in a voice of awe, "then each one of the
+family is to have just a common army ration.  They are to be treated as
+prisoners."
+
+"Oh, those Yankees are detestable!" exclaimed Virginia.  "But they shall
+pay for it.  As soon as our army is organized and equipped, they shall
+pay for it ten times over."  She tried on the bonnet, conspicuous with
+its red and white ribbons, before the glass.  Then she ran to the closet
+and drew forth the white gown with its red trimmings.  "Wait for me,
+Genie," she said, "and we'll go down to Puss's house together.  It may
+cheer her to see us."
+
+"But not in that dress," said Eugenie, aghast.  "They will arrest you."
+"Oh, how I wish they would!" cried Virginia.  And her eyes flashed so
+that Eugenie was frightened.  "How I wish they would!"
+
+Miss Renault regarded her friend with something of adoration from beneath
+her black lashes.  It was about five in the afternoon when they started
+out together under Virginia's white parasol, Eugenie's slimmer courage
+upheld by her friend's bearing.  We must remember that Virginia was
+young, and that her feelings were akin to those our great-grandmothers
+experienced when the British held New York.  It was as if she had been
+born to wear the red and white of the South.  Elderly gentlemen of
+Northern persuasion paused in their homeward walk to smile in admiration,
+--some sadly, as Mr. Brinsmade.  Young gentlemen found an excuse to
+retrace their steps a block or two.  But Virginia walked on air, and saw
+nothing.  She was between fierce anger and exaltation.  She did not deign
+to drop her eyes as low as the citizen sergeant and guard in front of
+Puss Russell's house (these men were only human, after all); she did not
+so much as glance at the curious people standing on the corner, who could
+not resist a murmur of delight.  The citizen sergeant only smiled, and
+made no move to arrest the young lady in red and white.  Nor did Puss
+fling open the blinds and wave at her.
+
+"I suppose its because Mr. Russell won't let her," said Virginia,
+disconsolately, "Genie, let's go to headquarters, and show this Yankee
+General Fremont that we are not afraid of him."
+
+Eugenie's breath was taken away by the very boldness of this
+proposition..  She looked up timidly into Virginia's face, and hero-
+worship got the better of prudence.
+
+The house which General Fremont appropriated for his use when he came
+back from Europe to assume command in the West was not a modest one.  It
+still stands, a large mansion of brick with a stone front, very tall and
+very wide, with an elaborate cornice and plate-glass windows, both tall
+and broad, and a high basement.  Two stately stone porches capped by
+elaborate iron railings adorn it in front and on the side.  The chimneys
+are generous and proportional.  In short, the house is of that type built
+by many wealthy gentlemen in the middle of the century, which has best
+stood the test of time,--the only type which, if repeated to-day, would
+not clash with the architectural education which we are receiving.  A
+spacious yard well above the pavement surrounds it, sustained by a wall
+of dressed stones, capped by an iron fence.  The whole expressed wealth,
+security, solidity, conservatism.  Alas, that the coal deposits under the
+black mud of our Western states should, at length, have driven the owners
+of these houses out of them!  They are now blackened, almost buried in
+soot; empty, or half-tenanted by boarders,  Descendants of the old
+families pass them on their way to business or to the theatre with a
+sigh.  The sons of those who owned them have built westward, and west-
+ward again, until now they are six miles from the river.
+
+On that summer evening forty years ago, when Virginia and Eugenie came in
+sight of the house, a scene of great animation was before them.  Talk was
+rife over the commanding general's pomp and circumstance.  He had just
+returned from Europe, where pomp and circumstance and the military were
+wedded.  Foreign officers should come to America to teach our army dress
+and manners.  A dashing Hungarian commanded the general's body-guard,
+which honorable corps was even then drawn up in the street before the
+house, surrounded at a respectable distance by a crowd that feared to
+jest.  They felt like it save when they caught the stern military eye
+of the Hungarian captain.  Virginia gazed at the glittering uniforms,
+resplendent in the sun, and at the sleek and well-fed horses, and
+scalding tears came as she thought of the half-starved rabble of Southern
+patriots on the burning prairies.  Just then a sharp command escaped in
+broken English from the Hungarian.  The people in the yard of the mansion
+parted, and the General himself walked proudly out of the gate to the
+curb, where his charger was pawing the gutter.  As be put foot to the
+stirrup, the eye of the great man (once candidate, and again to be, for
+President) caught the glint of red and white on the corner.  For an
+instant he stood transfixed to the spot, with one leg in the air.  Then
+he took it down again and spoke to a young officer of his staff, who
+smiled and began to walk toward them.  Little Eugenie's knees trembled.
+She seized Virginia's arm, and whispered in agony.
+
+"Oh, Jinny, you are to be arrested, after all.  Oh, I wish you hadn't
+been so bold!"
+
+"Hush," said Virginia, as she prepared to slay the young officer with a
+look.  She felt like flying at his throat, and choking him for the
+insolence of that smile.  How dare he march undaunted to within six paces
+of those eyes?  The crowd drew back,  But did Miss Carvel retreat?  Not a
+step.  "Oh, I hope he will arrest me," she said passionately, to Eugenie.
+"He will start a conflagration beyond the power of any Yankee to quell."
+
+But hush! he was speaking.  "You are my prisoners"?  No, those were not
+the words, surely.  The lieutenant had taken off his cap.  He bowed very
+low and said:
+
+"Ladies, the General's  compliments, and he begs that this much of the
+sidewalk may be kept clear for a few moments."
+
+What was left for them, after that, save a retreat?  But he was not
+precipitate.  Miss Virginia crossed the street with a dignity and bearing
+which drew even the eyes of the body-guard to one side.  And there she
+stood haughtily until the guard and the General had thundered away.  A
+crowd of black-coated civilians, and quartermasters and other officers
+in uniform, poured out of the basement of the house into the yards.  One
+civilian, a youngish man a little inclined to stoutness, stopped at the
+gate, stared, then thrust some papers in his pocket and hurried down
+the side street.  Three blocks thence he appeared abreast of Miss Carvel.
+More remarkable still, he lifted his hat clear of his head.  Virginia
+drew back.  Mr. Hopper, with his newly acquired equanimity and poise,
+startled her.
+
+"May I have the pleasure," said that gentleman, "of accompanying you
+home?"
+
+Eugenie giggled,  Virginia was more annoyed than she showed.
+
+"You must not come out of your way," she said.  Then she added.  "I am
+sure you must go back to the store.  It is only six o'clock."
+
+Had Virginia but known, this occasional tartness in her speech gave
+Eliphalet an infinite delight, even while it hurt him.  His was a nature
+which liked to gloat over a goal on the horizon  He cared not a whit for
+sweet girls; they cloyed.  But a real lady was something to attain.  He
+had revised his vocabulary for just such an occasion, and thrown out some
+of the vernacular.
+
+"Business is not so pressing nowadays, Miss Carvel," he answered, with a
+shade of meaning.
+
+"Then existence must be rather heavy for you," she said.  She made no
+attempt to introduce him to Eugenie.  "If we should have any more
+victories like Bull Run, prosperity will come back with a rush," said the
+son of Massachusetts.  "Southern Confederacy, with Missouri one of its
+stars an industrial development of the South--fortunes in cotton"
+
+Virginia turned quickly, "Oh, how dare you?"  she cried.  "How dare you
+speak flippantly of such things?"  His suavity was far from overthrown.
+
+"Flippantly Miss Carvel?" said he.  "I assure you that I want to see the
+South win."  What he did not know was that words seldom convince women.
+But he added something which reduced her incredulity for the time.  "Do
+you cal'late," said he,--that I could work for your father, and wish ruin
+to his country?"
+
+"But you are a Yankee born," she exclaimed.
+
+"There be a few sane Yankees," replied Mr. Hopper, dryly.  A remark which
+made Eugenie laugh outright, and Virginia could not refrain from a smile,
+
+But much against her will he walked home with her.  She was indignant by
+the time she reached Locust Street.  He had never dared do such a thing
+before,  What had got into the man?  Was it because he had become a
+manager, and governed the business during her father's frequent absences?
+No matter what Mr. Hopper's politics, he would always be to her a low-
+born Yankee, a person wholly unworthy of notice.
+
+At the corner of Olive Street, a young man walking with long strides
+almost bumped into them.  He paused looked back, and bowed as if
+uncertain of an acknowledgment.  Virginia barely returned his bow.  He
+had been very close to her, and she had had time to notice that his
+coat was threadbare.  When she looked again, he had covered half the
+block.  Why should she care if Stephen Brice had seen her in company with
+Mr, Hopper?  Eliphalet, too, had seen Stephen, and this had added zest to
+his enjoyment.  It was part of the fruits of his reward.  He wished in
+that short walk that he might meet Mr. Cluyme and Belle, and every man
+and woman and child in the city whom he knew.  From time to time he
+glanced at the severe profile of the aristocrat beside him (he had to
+look up a bit, likewise), and that look set him down among the beasts of
+prey.  For she was his rightful prey, and he meant not to lose one tittle
+of enjoyment in the progress of the game.  Many and many a night in the
+bare little back room at Miss Crane's, Eliphalet had gloated over the
+very event which was now come to pass.  Not a step of the way but what he
+had lived through before.
+
+The future is laid open to such men as he.  Since he had first seen the
+black cloud of war rolling up from the South, a hundred times had he
+rehearsed the scene with Colonel Carvel which had actually taken place a
+week before.  A hundred times had he prepared his speech and manner for
+this first appearance in public with Virginia after he had forced the
+right to walk in her company.  The words he had prepared--commonplace,
+to be sure, but carefully chosen--flowed from his lips in a continual
+nasal stream.  The girl answered absently, her feminine instinct groping
+after a reason for it all.  She brightened when she saw her father at the
+doors and, saying good by to Eugenie, tripped up the steps, bowing to
+Eliphalet coldly.
+
+"Why, bless us, Jinny," said the Colonel, "you haven't been parading the
+town in that costume!  You'll have us in Lynch's slave pen by to-morrow
+night.  My land!" laughed he, patting her under the chin, "there's no
+doubt about your sentiments, anyhow."
+
+"I've been over to Puss Russell's house," said she, breathless.  "They've
+closed it up, you know--" (He nodded.)  "And then we went--Eugenie and I,
+to headquarters, just to see what the Yankees would do."
+
+The Colonel's smile faded.  He looked grave.  "You must take care,
+honey," he said, lowering his voice.  "They suspect me now of
+communicating with the Governor and McCulloch.  Jinny, it's all very well
+to be brave, and to stand by your colors.  But this sort of thing," said
+he, stroking the gown, "this sort of thing doesn't help the South, my
+dear, and only sets spies upon us.  Ned tells me that there was a man in
+plain clothes standing in the alley last night for three hours."
+
+"Pa," cried the girl, "I'm so sorry."  Suddenly searching his face with a
+swift instinct, she perceived that these months had made it yellow and
+lined.  "Pa, dear, you must come to Glencoe to-morrow and rest  You must
+not go off on any more trips."
+
+The Colonel shook his head sadly.
+
+"It isn't the trips, Jinny  There are duties, my dear, pleasant duties--
+Jinny--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+The Colonel's eye had suddenly fallen on Mr, Hopper, who was still
+standing at the bottom of the steps.  He checked himself abruptly as
+Eliphalet pulled off his hat,
+
+"Howdy, Colonel?" he said.
+
+Virginia was motionless, with her back to the intruder, She was frozen by
+a presentiment.  As she saw her father start down the steps, she yearned
+to throw herself in front of him--to warn him of something; she knew not
+what.  Then she heard the Colonel's voice, courteous and kindly as ever.
+And yet it broke a little as he greeted his visitor.
+
+"Won't--won't you come in, Mr. Hopper?"
+
+Virginia started
+
+"I don't know but what I will, thank you, Colonel," he answered; easily.
+"I took the liberty of walking home with your daughter."
+
+Virginia fairly flew into the house and up the stairs.  Gaining her room,
+she shut the door and turned the key, as though he might pursue her
+there.  The man's face had all at once become a terror.  She threw
+herself on the lounge and buried her face in her hands, and she saw it
+still leering at her with a new confidence.  Presently she grew calmer;
+rising, she put on the plainest of her scanty wardrobe, and went down the
+stairs, all in a strange trepidation new to her.  She had never been in
+fear of a man before.  She hearkened over the banisters for his voice,
+heard it, and summoned all her courage.  How cowardly she had been to
+leave her father alone with him.
+
+Eliphalet stayed to tea.  It mattered little to him that Mrs. Colfax
+ignored him as completely as if his chair had been vacant  He glanced
+at that lady once, and smiled, for he was tasting the sweets of victory.
+It was Virginia who entertained him, and even the Colonel never guessed
+what it cost her.  Eliphalet himself marvelled at her change of manner,
+and gloated over that likewise.  Not a turn or a quiver of the victim's
+pain is missed by your beast of prey.  The Colonel was gravely polite,
+but preoccupied.  Had he wished it, he could not have been rude to a
+guest.  He offered Mr. Hopper a cigar with the same air that he would
+have given it to a governor.
+
+"Thank'ee, Colonel, I don't smoke," he said, waving the bog away.
+
+Mrs. Colfax flung herself out of the room.
+
+It was ten o'clock when Eliphalet reached Miss Crane's, and picked his
+way up the front steps where the boarders were gathered.
+
+"The war doesn't seem to make any difference in your business, Mr.
+Hopper," his landlady remarked, "where have you been so late?"
+
+"I happened round at Colonel Carvel's this afternoon, and stayed for tea
+with 'em," he answered, striving to speak casually.
+
+Miss Crane lingered in Mrs. Abner Reed's room later than usual that
+night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE SCOURGE OF WAR
+
+"Virginia," said Mrs. Colfax, the next morning on coming downstairs,
+"I am going back to Bellegarde today.  I really cannot put up with such
+a person as Comyn had here to tea last night."
+
+"Very well, Aunt Lillian.  At what time shall I order the carriage?"
+
+The lady was surprised.  It is safe to say that she had never accurately
+gauged the force which Virginia's respect for her elders, and affection
+for her aunt through Clarence, held in check.  Only a moment since Mrs.
+Colfax had beheld her niece.  Now there had arisen in front of her a tall
+person of authority, before whom she deferred instinctively.  It was not
+what Virginia said, for she would not stoop to tirade.  Mrs. Colfax sank
+into a chair, seeing only the blurred lines of a newspaper the girl had
+thrust into her hand.
+
+"What--what is it?"  she gasped.  "I cannot read."
+
+"There has been a battle at Wilson's Creek," said Virginia, in an
+emotionless voice.  "General Lyon is killed, for which I suppose we
+should be thankful.  More than seven hundred of the wounded are on their
+way here.  They are bringing them one hundred and twenty miles, from
+Springfield to Rollo, in rough army wagons, with scarcely anything to eat
+or drink."
+
+"And--Clarence?"
+
+"His name is not there."
+
+"Thank God!" exclaimed Mrs. Colfax.  "Are the Yankees beaten?"
+
+"Yes," said Virginia, coldly.  "At what time shall I order the carriage
+to take you to Bellegarde?"
+
+Mrs. Colfax leaned forward and caught the hem of her niece's gown.  "Oh,
+let me stay," she cried, "let me stay.  Clarence may be with them."
+
+Virginia looked down at her without pity.
+
+"As you please, Aunt Lillian," she answered.  "You know that you may
+always stay here.  I only beg of you one thing, that when you have
+anything to complain of, you will bring it to me, and not mention it
+before Pa.  He has enough to worry him."
+
+"Oh, Jinny," sobbed the lady, in tears again, "how can you be so cruel at
+such a time, when my nerves are all in pieces?"
+
+But she did not lift her voice at dinner, which was very poor indeed for
+Colonel Carvel's house.  All day long Virginia, assisted by Uncle Ben and
+Aunt Easter, toiled in the stifling kitchen, preparing dainties which
+she had long denied herself.  At evening she went to the station at
+Fourteenth Street with her father, and stood amongst the people, pressed
+back by the soldiers, until the trains came in.  Alas, the heavy basket
+which the Colonel carried on his arm was brought home again.  The first
+hundred to arrive, ten hours in a hot car without food or water, were
+laid groaning on the bottom of great furniture vans, and carted to the
+new House of Refuge Hospital, two miles to the south of the city.
+
+The next day many good women went there, Rebel and Union alike, to have
+their hearts wrung.  The new and cheap building standing in the hot sun
+reeked with white wash and paint.  The miserable men lay on the hard
+floor, still in the matted clothes they had worn in battle.  Those were
+the first days of the war, when the wages of our passions first came to
+appal us.  Many of the wounds had not been tended since they were dressed
+on the field weeks before.
+
+Mrs. Colfax went too, with the Colonel and her niece, although she
+declared repeatedly that she could not go through with such an ordeal.
+She spoke the truth, for Mr. Carvel had to assist her to the waiting-
+room.  Then he went back to the improvised wards to find Virginia
+busy over a gaunt Arkansan of Price's army, whose pitiful, fever-glazed
+eyes were following her every motion.  His frontiersman's clothes,
+stained with blackened blood, hung limp over his wasted body.  At
+Virginia's bidding the Colonel ran downstairs for a bucket of fresh
+water, and she washed the caked dust from his face and hands.  It was Mr.
+Brinsmade who got the surgeon to dress the man's wound, and to prescribe
+some of the broth from Virginia's basket.  For the first time since the
+war began something of happiness entered her breast.
+
+It was Mr. Brinsmade who was everywhere that day, answering the questions
+of distracted mothers and fathers and sisters who thronged the place;
+consulting with the surgeons; helping the few who knew how to work in
+placing mattresses under the worst cases; or again he might have been
+seen seated on the bare floor with a pad on his knee, taking down the
+names of dear ones in distant states,--that he might spend his night
+writing to them.
+
+They put a mattress under the Arkansan.  Virginia did not leave him until
+he had fallen asleep, and a smile of peace was come upon his sunken face.
+Dismayed at the fearful sights about her, awed by the groans that rose on
+every side, she was choosing her way swiftly down the room to join her
+father and aunt in the carriage below.
+
+The panic of flight had seized her.  She felt that another little while
+in this heated, horrible place would drive her mad.  She was almost at
+the door when she came suddenly upon a sight that made her pause.
+
+An elderly lady in widow's black was kneeling beside a man groaning in
+mortal agony, fanning away the flies already gathering about his face.
+He wore the uniform of a Union sergeant,--dusty and splotched and torn.
+A small Testament was clasped convulsively in the fingers of his right
+band.  The left sleeve was empty.  Virginia lingered, whelmed in pity,
+thrilled by a wonderful womanliness of her who knelt there.  Her face the
+girl had not even seen, for it was bent over the man.  The sweetness of
+her voice held Virginia as in a spell, and the sergeant stopped groaning
+that he might listen:
+
+"You have a wife?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"And a child?"
+
+The answer came so painfully.
+
+"A boy, ma'am--born the week--before I came--away."
+
+"I shall write to your wife," said the lady, so gently that Virginia
+could scarce hear, "and tell her that you are cared for.  Where does she
+live?"
+
+He gave the address faintly--some little town in Minnesota.  Then he
+added, "God bless you, lady."
+
+Just then the chief surgeon came and stood over them.  The lady turned
+her face up to him, and tears sparkled in her eyes.  Virginia felt them
+wet in her own.  Her worship was not given to many.  Nobility, character,
+efficiency,-all were written on that face.  Nobility spoke in the large
+features, in the generous mouth, in the calm, gray eyes.  Virginia had
+seen her often before, but not until now was the woman revealed to her.
+
+"Doctor, could this man's life be saved if I took him to my home?"
+
+The surgeon got down beside her and took the man's pulse.  The eyes
+closed.  For a while the doctor knelt there, shaking his head.  "He has
+fainted," he said.
+
+"Do you think he can be saved?"  asked the lady again.  The surgeon
+smiled,--such a smile as a good man gives after eighteen hours of
+amputating, of bandaging, of advising,--work which requires a firm hand,
+a clear eye and brain, and a good heart.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Brice," he said, "I shall be glad to get you permission to
+take him, but we must first make him worth the taking.  Another hour
+would have been too late."  He glanced hurriedly about the busy room, and
+then added, "We must have one more to help us."
+
+Just then some one touched Virginia's arm.  It was her father.
+
+"I am afraid we must go, dear," he said, "your aunt is getting
+impatient."
+
+"Won't you please go without me, Pa?"  she asked.  "Perhaps I can be of
+some use."
+
+The Colonel cast a wondering glance at the limp uniform, and went away.
+The surgeon, who knew the Carvel family, gave Virginia a look of
+astonishment.  It was Mrs. Brice's searching gaze that brought the color
+to the girl's, face.
+
+"Thank you, my dear," she said simply.
+
+As soon as he could get his sister-in-law off to Locust Street in the
+carriage, Colonel Carvel came back.  For two reeking hours he stood
+against the newly plastered wall.  Even he was surprised at the fortitude
+and skill Virginia showed from the very first, when she had deftly cut
+away the stiffened blue cloth, and helped to take off the rough bandages.
+At length the fearful operation was finished, and the weary surgeon,
+gathering up his box, expressed with all the energy left to him, his
+thanks to the two ladies.
+
+Virginia stood up, faint and dizzy.  The work of her hands had sustained
+her while it lasted, but now the ordeal was come.  She went down the
+stairs on her father's arm, and out into the air.  All at once she knew
+that Mrs. Brice was beside her, and had taken her by the hand.
+
+"My dear?" she was saying, "God will reward you for this act.  You have
+taught many of us to-day a lesson we should have learned in our Bibles."
+
+Virginia trembled with many emotions, but she answered nothing.  The mere
+presence of this woman had a strange effect upon the girl,--she was
+filled with a longing unutterable.  It was not because Margaret Brice was
+the mother of him whose life had been so strangely blended with hers--
+whom she saw in her dreams.  And yet now some of Stephen's traits seemed
+to come to her understanding, as by a revelation.  Virginia had labored
+through the heat of the day by Margaret Brice's side doing His work,
+which levels all feuds and makes all women sisters.  One brief second had
+been needful for the spell.
+
+The Colonel bowed with that courtesy and respect which distinguished him,
+and Mrs. Brice left them to go back into the room of torment, and watch
+by the sergeant's pallet.  Virginia's eyes followed her up the stairs,
+and then she and her father walked slowly to the carriage.  With her foot
+on the step Virginia paused.
+
+"Pa," she said, "do you think it would be possible to get them to let us
+take that Arkansan into our house?"
+
+"Why, honey, I'll ask Brinsmade if you like," said the Colonel.  "Here he
+comes now, and Anne."
+
+It was Virginia who put the question to him.
+
+"My dear,"  replied  that gentleman, patting her, "I would do anything
+in the world for you.  I'll see General Fremont this very afternoon.
+Virginia," he added, soberly, "it is such acts as yours to-day that
+give us courage to live in these times."
+
+Anne kissed her friend,
+
+"Oh, Jinny, I saw what you were doing for one of our men.  What am I
+saying?"  she cried.  "They are your men, too.  This horrible war cannot
+last.  It cannot last.  It was well that Virginia did not see the smile
+on the face of the commanding general when Mr. Brinsmade at length got to
+him with her request.  This was before the days when the wounded arrived
+by the thousands, when the zeal of the Southern ladies threatened to
+throw out of gear the workings of a great system.  But the General,
+had had his eye on Mr. Carvel from the first.  Therefore he smiled.
+
+"Colonel Carvel," said Mr. Brinsmade, with dignity, "is a gentleman.
+When he gives his word, it is sacred, sir."
+
+"Even to an  enemy," the  General  put  in, "By George, Brinsmade, unless
+I knew you, I should think that you were half rebel yourself.  Well,
+well, he may have his Arkansan."
+
+Mr. Brinsmade, when he conveyed the news to the Carvel  house, did not
+say that he had wasted a precious afternoon in the attempt to interview
+his Excellency, the Commander in-chief.  It was like obtaining an
+audience with the Sultan or the Czar.  Citizens who had been prominent
+in affairs for twenty years, philanthropists and patriotic-spirited men
+like Mr. Brinsmade, the mayor, and all the ex-mayors mopped their brows
+in one of the general's anterooms of the big mansion, and wrangled with
+beardless youths in bright uniforms who were part of the chain.  The
+General might have been a Richelieu, a Marlborough.  His European notions
+of uniformed inaccessibility he carried out to the letter.  He was a
+royal personage, seldom seen, who went abroad in the midst of a
+glittering guard.  It did not seem to weigh with his Excellency that
+these simple and democratic gentlemen would not put up with this sort
+of thing.  That they who had saved the city to the Union were more or
+less in communication with a simple and democratic President; that in
+all their lives they had never been in the habit of sitting idly for
+two hours to mop their brows.
+
+On the other hand, once you got beyond the gold lace and the etiquette,
+you discovered a good man and a patriot.  It was far from being the
+General's fault that Mr. Hopper and others made money in mules and
+worthless army blankets.  Such things always have been, and always will
+be unavoidable when this great country of ours rises from the deep sleep
+of security into which her sons have lulled her, to demand her sword.
+We shall never be able to realize that the maintenance of a standing army
+of comfortable size will save millions in the end.  So much for Democracy
+when it becomes a catchword.
+
+The General was a good man, had he done nothing else than encourage the
+Western Sanitary Commission, that glorious army of drilled men and women
+who gave up all to relieve the suffering which the war was causing.
+Would that a novel--a great novel--might be written setting forth with
+truth its doings.  The hero of it could be Calvin Brinsmade, and a nobler
+hero than he was never under a man's hand.  For the glory of generals
+fades beside his glory.
+
+It was Mr. Brinsmade's carriage that brought Mrs. Brice home from her
+trying day in the hospital.  Stephen, just returned from drill at
+Verandah hall, met her at the door.  She would not listen to his
+entreaties to rest, but in the evening, as usual, took her sewing
+to the porch behind the house, where there was a little breeze.
+
+"Such a singular thing happened to-day, Stephen," she said.  "It was
+while we were trying to save the life of a poor sergeant who had lost his
+arm.  I hope we shall be allowed to have him here.  He is suffering
+horribly."
+
+"What happened, mother?" he asked.
+
+"It was soon after I had come upon this poor fellow," she said.  "I saw
+the--the flies around him.  And as I got down beside him to fan them away
+I had such a queer sensation.  I knew that some one was standing behind
+me, looking at me.  Then Dr. Allerdyce came, and I asked him about the
+man, and he said there was a chance of saving him if we could only get
+help.  Then some one spoke up,--such a sweet voice.  It was that Miss
+Carvel my dear, with whom you had such a strange experience when you
+bought Hester, and to whose party you once went.  Do you remember that
+they offered us their house in Glencoe when the Judge was so ill?"
+
+"Yes," said Stephen.
+
+"She is a wonderful creature," his mother continued.  "Such personality,
+such life!  And wasn't it a remarkable offer for a Southern woman to
+make?  They feel so bitterly, and--and I do not blame them."  The good
+lady put down on her lap the night-shirt she was making.  "I saw how it
+happened.  The girl was carried away by her pity.  And, my dear, her
+capability astonished me.  One might have thought that she had always
+been a nurse.  The experience was a dreadful one for me--what must it
+have been for her.  After the operation was over, I followed her
+downstairs to where she was standing with her father in front of the
+building, waiting for their carriage.  I felt that I must say something
+to her, for in all my life I have never seen a nobler thing done.  When I
+saw her there, I scarcely knew what to say.  Words seemed so inadequate.
+It was then three o'clock, and she had been working steadily in that
+place since morning.  I am sure she could not have borne it much longer.
+Sheer courage carried her through it, I know, for her hand trembled so
+when I took it, and she was very pale.  She usually has color, I believe.
+Her father, the Colonel, was with her, and he bowed to me with such
+politeness.  He had stood against the wall all the while we had worked,
+and he brought a mattress for us.  I have heard that his house is
+watched, and that they have him under suspicion for communicating with
+the Confederate leaders."  Mrs. Brice sighed.  He seems such a fine
+character.  I hope they will not get into any trouble."
+
+"I hope not, mother," said Stephen.
+
+
+It was two mornings later that Judge Whipple and Stephen drove to the
+Iron Mountain depot, where they found a German company of Home Guards
+drawn up.  On the long wooden platform under the sheds Stephen caught
+sight of Herr Korner and Herr Hauptmann amid a group of their countrymen.
+Little Korner came forward to clasp his hands.  The tears ran on his
+cheeks, and he could not speak for emotion.  Judge Whipple, grim and
+silent, stood apart.  But he uncovered his head with the others when the
+train rolled in.  Reverently they entered a car where the pine boxes were
+piled one on another, and they bore out the earthly remains of Captain
+Carl Richter.
+
+Far from the land of his birth, among those same oaks on Bloody Hill
+where brave Lyon fell, he had gladly given up his life for the new
+country and the new cause he had made his own.
+
+That afternoon in the cemetery, as the smoke of the last salute to a hero
+hung in the flickering light and drifted upward through the great trees,
+as the still air was yet quivering with the notes of the bugle-call which
+is the soldiers requiem, a tall figure, gaunt and bent, stepped out from
+behind the blue line of the troops.  It was that of Judge Whipple.  He
+carried in his hand a wreath of white roses--the first of many to be laid
+on Richter's grave.
+
+Poor Richter!  How sad his life had been!  And yet he had not filled it
+with sadness.  For many a month, and many a year, Stephen could not look
+upon his empty place without a pang.  He missed the cheery songs and the
+earnest presence even more than he had thought.  Carl Richter,--as his
+father before him,--had lived for others.  Both had sacrificed their
+bodies for a cause.  One of them might be pictured as he trudged with
+Father Jahn from door to door through the Rhine country, or shouldering
+at sixteen a heavy musket in the Landwehr's ranks to drive the tyrant
+Napoleon from the beloved Fatherland Later, aged before his time, his
+wife dead of misery, decrepit and prison-worn in the service of a
+thankless country, his hopes lived again in Carl, the swordsman of Jena.
+Then came the pitiful Revolution, the sundering of all ties, the elder
+man left to drag out his few weary days before a shattered altar.  In
+Carl a new aspiration had sprung up, a new patriotism stirred.  His, too,
+had been the sacrifice.  Happy in death, for he had helped perpetuate
+that great Union which should be for all time the refuge of the
+oppressed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LIST OF SIXTY
+
+One chilling day in November, when an icy rain was falling on the black
+mud of the streets, Virginia looked out of the window.  Her eye was
+caught by two horses which were just skeletons with the skin stretched
+over them.  One had a bad sore on his flank, and was lame.  They were
+pulling a rattle-trap farm wagon with a buckled wheel.  On the seat a
+man, pallid and bent and scantily clad, was holding the reins in his
+feeble hands, while beside him cowered a child of ten wrapped in a ragged
+blanket.  In the body of the wagon, lying on a mattress pressed down in
+the midst of broken, cheap furniture and filthy kitchen ware, lay a gaunt
+woman in the rain.  Her eyes were closed, and a hump on the surface of
+the dirty quilt beside her showed that a child must be there.  From such
+a picture the girl fled in tears.  But the sight of it, and of others
+like it, haunted her for weeks.  Through those last dreary days of
+November, wretched families, which a year since had been in health and
+prosperity, came to the city, beggars, with the wrecks of their homes.
+The history of that hideous pilgrimage across a state has never been
+written.  Still they came by the hundred, those families.  Some brought
+little corpses to be buried.  The father of one, hale and strong when
+they started, died of pneumonia in the public lodging-house.  The walls
+of that house could tell many tales to wring the heart.  So could Mr.
+Brinsmade, did he choose to speak of his own charities.  He found time,
+between his labors at the big hospital newly founded, and his
+correspondence, and his journeys of love,--between early morning and
+midnight,--to give some hours a day to the refugees.
+
+Throughout December they poured in on the afflicted city, already
+overtaxed.  All the way to Springfield the road was lined with remains of
+articles once dear--a child's doll, a little rocking-chair, a colored
+print that has hung in the best room, a Bible text.
+
+Anne Brinsmade, driven by Nicodemus, went from house to house to solicit
+old clothes, and take them to the crowded place of detention.  Christmas
+was drawing near--a sorry Christmas, in truth.  And many of the wanderers
+were unclothed and unfed.
+
+More battles had been fought; factions had arisen among Union men.
+Another general had come to St. Louis to take charge of the Department,
+and the other with his wondrous body-guard was gone.
+
+The most serious problem confronting the new general--was how to care for
+the refugees.  A council of citizens was called at headquarters, and the
+verdict went forth in the never-to-be-forgotten Orders No. 24.
+
+"Inasmuch," said the General, "as the Secession army had driven these
+people from their homes, Secession sympathizers should be made to support
+them."  He added that the city was unquestionably full of these.
+
+Indignation was rife the day that order was published.  Sixty prominent
+"disloyalists" were to be chosen and assessed to make up a sum of ten
+thousand dollars.
+
+"They may sell my house over my head before I will pay a cent," cried Mr.
+Russell.  And he meant it.  This was the way the others felt.  Who were
+to be on this mysterious list of "Sixty"?  That was the all-absorbing
+question of the town.  It was an easy matter to pick the conspicuous
+ones.  Colonel Carvel was sure to be there.  and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.
+Russell and Mr. James, and Mr. Worington the lawyer.  Mrs. Addison Colfax
+lived for days in a fermented state of excitement which she declared
+would break her down; and which, despite her many cares and worries, gave
+her niece not a little amusement.  For Virginia was human, and one
+morning she went to her aunt's room to read this editorial from the
+newspaper:--
+
+"For the relief of many palpitating hearts it may be well to state that
+we understand only two ladies are on the ten thousand dollar list."
+
+"Jinny," she cried, "how can you be so cruel as to read me that, when you
+know that I am in a state of frenzy now?  How does that relieve me?  It
+makes it an absolute certainty that Madame Jules and I will have to pay.
+We are the only women of importance in the city."
+
+That afternoon she made good her much-uttered threat, and drove to
+Bellegarde.  Only the Colonel and Virginia and Mammy Easter and Ned were
+left in the big house.  Rosetta and Uncle Ben and Jackson had been hired
+out, and the horses sold,--all save old Dick, who was running, long-
+haired, in the fields at Glencoe.
+
+Christmas eve was a steel-gray day, and the sleet froze as it fell.
+Since morning Colonel Carvel had sat poking the sitting-room fire, or
+pacing the floor restlessly.  His occupation was gone.  He was observed
+night and day by Federal detectives.  Virginia strove to amuse him, to
+conceal her anxiety as she watched him.  Well she knew that but for her
+he would long since have fled southward, and often in the bitterness of
+the night-time she blamed herself for not telling him to go.  Ten years
+had seemed to pass over him since the war had begun.
+
+All day long she had been striving to put away from her the memory of
+Christmas eves past and gone of her father's early home-coming from the
+store, a mysterious smile on his face; of Captain Lige stamping noisily
+into the house, exchanging uproarious jests with Ned and Jackson.  The
+Captain had always carried under his arm a shapeless bundle which he
+would confide to Ned with a knowing wink.  And then the house would be
+lighted from top to bottom, and Mr. Russell and Mr. Catherwood and Mr.
+Brinsmade came in for a long evening with Mr. Carvel over great bowls of
+apple toddy and egg-nog.  And Virginia would have her own friends in the
+big parlor.  That parlor was shut up now, and icy cold.
+
+Then there was Judge Whipple, the joyous event of whose year was his
+Christmas dinner at Colonel Carvel's house.  Virginia pictured him this
+year at Mrs. Brice's little table, and wondered whether he would miss
+them as much as they missed him.  War may break friendships, but it
+cannot take away the sacredness of memories.
+
+The sombre daylight was drawing to an early close as the two stood
+looking out of the sitting-room window.  A man's figure muffled in a
+greatcoat slanting carefully across the street caught their eyes.
+Virginia started.  It was the same United States deputy marshal she had
+seen the day before at Mr. Russell's house.
+
+"Pa," she cried, "do you think he is coming here?  "I reckon so, honey."
+
+"The brute!  Are you going to pay?"
+
+"No, Jinny."
+
+Then they will take away the furniture.  "I reckon they will."
+
+"Pa, you must promise me to take down the mahogany bed in your room.
+It--it was mother's.  I could not bear to see them take that.  Let me put
+it in the garret."
+
+The Colonel was distressed, but he spoke without a tremor.
+
+"No, Jinny.  We must leave this house just as it is."  Then he added,
+strangely enough for him, "God's will be done."
+
+The bell rang sharply.  And Ned, who was cook and housemaid, came in with
+his apron on.
+
+"Does you want to see folks, Marse Comyn?"
+
+The Colonel rose, and went to the door himself.  He was an imposing
+figure as he stood in the windy vestibule, confronting the deputy.
+Virginia's first impulse was to shrink under the stairs.  Then she came
+out and stood beside her father.
+
+"Are you Colonel Carvel?"
+
+"I reckon I am.  Will you come in?"
+
+The officer took off his cap.  He was a young man with a smooth face, and
+a frank brown eye which paid its tribute to Virginia.  He did not appear
+to relish the duty thrust upon him.  He fumbled in his coat and drew from
+his inner pocket a paper.
+
+"Colonel Carvel," said he, "by order of Major General Halleck, I serve
+you with this notice to pay the sum of three hundred and fifty dollars
+for the benefit of the destitute families which the Rebels have driven
+from their homes.  In default of payment within a reasonable time such
+personal articles will be seized and sold at public auction as will
+satisfy the demand against you."
+
+The Colonel took the paper.  "Very well, sir," he said.  "You may tell
+the General that the articles may be seized.  That I will not, while in
+my right mind, be forced to support persons who have no claim upon me."
+
+It was said in the tone in which he might have refused an invitation to
+dinner.  The deputy marvelled.  He had gone into many houses that week;
+had seen indignation, hysterics, frenzy.  He had even heard men and women
+whose sons and brothers were in the army of secession proclaim their
+loyalty to the Union.  But this dignity, and the quiet scorn of the girl
+who had stood silent beside them, were new.  He bowed, and casting his
+eyes to the vestibule, was glad to escape from the house.
+
+The Colonel shut the door.  Then he turned toward Virginia, thoughtfully
+pulled his goatee, and laughed gently.  "Lordy, we haven't got three
+hundred and fifty dollars to our names," said he.
+
+The climate of St. Louis is capricious.  That fierce valley of the
+Missouri, which belches fitful blizzards from December to March, is
+sometimes quiet.  Then the hot winds come up from the Gulf, and sleet
+melts, and windows are opened.  In those days the streets will be fetlock
+deep in soft mud.  It is neither summer, nor winter, nor spring, nor
+anything.
+
+It was such a languorous afternoon in January that a furniture van,
+accompanied by certain nondescript persons known as United States Police,
+pulled up at the curb in front of Mr. Carvel's house.  Eugenie, watching
+at the window across the street, ran to tell her father, who came out on
+his steps and reviled the van with all the fluency of his French
+ancestors.
+
+Mammy Easter opened the door, and then stood with her arms akimbo, amply
+filling its place.  Her lips protruded, and an expression of defiance
+hard to describe sat on her honest black face.
+
+"Is this Colonel Carvel's house?"
+
+"Yassir.  I 'low you knows dat jes as well as me."  An embarrassed
+silence, and then from Mammy, "Whaffor you laffin at?"
+
+"Is the Colonel at home?"
+
+"Now I reckon you knows dat he ain't.  Ef he was, you ain't come here
+'quirin' in dat honey voice."  (Raising her own voice.)  "You tink I
+dunno whaffor you come?  You done come heah to rifle, an' to loot, an'
+to steal, an' to seize what ain't your'n.  You come heah when young
+Marse ain't to home ter rob him."  (Still louder.)  "Ned, whaffor you
+hidin' yonder?  Ef yo' ain't man to protect Marse Comyn's prop-ty, jes
+han' over Marse Comyn's gun."
+
+The marshal and his men had stood, half amused, more than half baffled by
+this unexpected resistance.  Mammy Easter looked so dangerous that it was
+evident she was not to be passed without extreme bodily discomfort.
+
+"Is your mistress here?"
+
+This question was unfortunate in the extreme.
+
+"You--you white trash!" cried Mammy, bursting with indignation.  "Who is
+you to come heah 'quiring fo' her!  I ain't agwine--"
+
+"Mammy!"
+
+"Yas'm!  Yas, Miss Jinny."  Mammy backed out of the door and clutched at
+her bandanna.
+
+"Mammy, what is all this noise about?"  The torrent was loosed once more.
+
+"These heah men, Miss Jinny, was gwine f'r t' carry away all yo' pa's
+blongin's.  I jes' tol' 'em dey ain't comin' in ovah dis heah body."
+
+The deputy had his foot on the threshold.  He caught sight of the face of
+Miss Carvel within, and stopped abruptly.
+
+"I have a warrant here from the Provost Marshal, ma'am, to seize personal
+property to satisfy a claim against Colonel Carvel."
+
+Virginia took the order, read it, and handed it back.  "I do not see how
+I am to prevent you," she said.  The deputy was plainly abashed.
+
+"I'm sorry, Miss.  I--I can't tell you how sorry I am.  But it's got to
+be done."
+
+Virginia nodded coldly.  And still the man hesitated.  "What are you
+waiting for?"  she said.
+
+The deputy wiped his muddy feet.  He made his men do likewise.  Then he
+entered the chill drawing-room, threw open the blinds and glanced around
+him.
+
+"I expect all that we want is right here," he said.  And at the sight of
+the great chandelier, with its cut-glass crystals, he whistled.  Then he
+walked over to the big English Rothfield piano and lifted the lid.
+
+The man was a musician.  Involuntarily he rested himself on the mahogany
+stool, and ran his fingers over the keys.  They seemed to Virginia,
+standing motionless in the ball, to give out the very chords of agony.
+
+The piano, too, had been her mother's.  It had once stood in the brick
+house of her grandfather Colfax at Halcyondale.  The songs of Beatrice
+lay on the bottom shelf of the what-not near by.  No more, of an evening
+when they were alone, would Virginia quietly take them out and play them
+over to the Colonel, as he sat dreaming in the window with his cigar,--
+dreaming of a field on the borders of a wood, of a young girl who held
+his hand, and sang them softly to herself as she walked by his side.
+And, when they reached the house in the October twilight, she had played
+them for him on this piano.  Often he had told Virginia of those days,
+and walked with her over those paths.
+
+The deputy closed the lid, and sent out to the van for a truck.  Virginia
+stirred.  For the first time she heard the words of Mammy Easter.
+
+"Come along upstairs wid yo' Mammy, honey.  Dis ain't no place for us,
+I reckon."  Her words were the essence of endearment.  And yet, while she
+pronounced them, she glared unceasingly at the intruders.  "Oh, de good
+Lawd'll burn de wicked!"
+
+The men were removing the carved legs.  Virginia went back into the room
+and stood before the deputy.
+
+"Isn't there something else you could take?  Some jewellery?  "She
+flushed.  "I have a necklace--"
+
+"No, miss.  This warrant's on your father.  And there ain't nothing quite
+so salable as pianos."
+
+She watched them, dry-eyed, as they carried it away.  It seemed like a
+coffin.  Only Mammy Easter guessed at the pain in Virginia's breast, and
+that was because there was a pain in her own.  They took the rosewood
+what-not, but Virginia snatched the songs before the men could
+touch them, and held them in her arms.  They seized the mahogany velvet-
+bottomed chairs, her uncle's wedding present to her mother; and, last of
+all, they ruthlessly tore up the Brussels carpet, beginning near the spot
+where Clarence had spilled ice-cream at one of her children's parties.
+
+She could not bear to look into the dismantled room when they had gone.
+It was the embodied wreck of her happiness.  Ned closed the blinds once
+more, and she herself turned the key in the lock, and went slowly up the
+stairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE AUCTION
+
+"Stephen," said the Judge, in his abrupt way, "there isn't a great deal
+doing.  Let's go over to the Secesh property sales."
+
+Stephen looked up in surprise.  The seizures and intended sale of
+secession property had stirred up immense bitterness and indignation in
+the city.  There were Unionists (lukewarm) who denounced the measure as
+unjust and brutal.  The feelings of Southerners, avowed and secret, may
+only be surmised.  Rigid ostracism was to be the price of bidding on any
+goods displayed, and men who bought in handsome furniture on that day
+because it was cheap have still, after forty years, cause to remember it.
+
+It was not that Stephen feared ostracism.  Anne Brinsmade was almost the
+only girl left to him from among his former circle of acquaintances.
+Miss Carvel's conduct is known.  The Misses Russell showed him very
+plainly that they disapproved of his politics.  The hospitable days at
+that house were over.  Miss Catherwood, when they met on the street,
+pretended not to see him, and Eugenie Renault gave him but a timid nod.
+The loyal families to whose houses he now went were mostly Southerners,
+in sentiment against forced auctions.
+
+However, he put on his coat, and sallied forth into the sharp air, the
+Judge leaning on his arm.  They walked for some distance in silence.
+
+"Stephen," said he, presently, "I guess I'll do a little bidding."
+
+Stephen did not reply.  But he was astonished.  He wondered what Mr.
+Whipple wanted with fine furniture.  And, if he really wished to bid,
+Stephen knew likewise that no consideration would stop him,
+
+You don't approve of this proceeding, sir, I suppose,", said the Judge.
+
+"Yes, sir, on large grounds.  War makes many harsh things necessary."
+
+"Then," said the Judge, tartly, "by bidding, we help to support starving
+Union families.  You should not be afraid to bid, sir."
+
+Stephen bit his lip.  Sometimes Mr. Whipple made him very angry.
+
+"I am not afraid to bid, Judge Whipple."  He did not see the smile on the
+Judge's face.
+
+"Then you will bid in certain things for me," said Mr. Whipple.  Here
+he hesitated, and shook free the rest of the sentence with a wrench.
+"Colonel Carvel always had a lot of stuff I wanted.  Now I've got the
+chance to buy it cheap."
+
+There was silence again, for the space of a whole block.  Finally,
+Stephen managed to say:--
+
+"You'll have to excuse me, sir.  I do not care to do that."
+
+"What?" cried the Judge, stopping in the middle of a cross-street, so
+that a wagon nearly ran over his toes.
+
+"I was once a guest in Colonel Carvel's house, sir.  And--"
+
+"And what?"
+
+Neither the young man nor the old knew all it was costing the other to
+say these things.  The Judge took a grim pleasure in eating his heart.
+And as for Stephen, he often went to his office through Locust Street,
+which was out of his way, in the hope that he might catch a glimpse of
+Virginia.  He had guessed much of the privations she had gone through.
+He knew that the Colonel had hired out most of his slaves, and he had
+actually seen the United States Police drive across Eleventh Street with
+the piano that she had played on.
+
+The Judge was laughing quietly,--not a pleasant laugh to hear,--as they
+came to Morgan's great warerooms.  A crowd blocked the pavement, and
+hustled and shoved at the doors,--roughs, and soldiers off duty, and
+ladies and gentlemen whom the Judge and Stephen knew, and some of whom
+they spoke to.  All of these were come out of curiosity, that they might
+see for themselves any who had the temerity to bid on a neighbor's
+household goods.  The long hall, which ran from street to street, was
+packed, the people surging backward and forward, and falling roughly
+against the mahogany pieces; and apologizing, and scolding, and swearing
+all in a breath.  The Judge, holding tightly to Stephen, pushed his way
+fiercely to the stand, vowing over and over that the commotion was a
+secession trick to spoil the furniture and stampede the sale.  In truth,
+it was at the Judge's suggestion that a blue provost's guard was called
+in later to protect the seized property.
+
+How many of those mahogany pieces, so ruthlessly tumbled about before the
+public eye, meant a heartache!  Wedding presents of long ago, dear to
+many a bride with silvered hair, had been torn from the corner where the
+children had played--children who now, alas, were grown and gone to
+war.  Yes, that was the Brussels rug that had lain before the fire, and
+which the little feet had worn in the corner.  Those were the chairs the
+little hands had harnessed, four in a row, and fallen on its side was the
+armchair--the stage coach itself.  There were the books, held up to
+common gaze, that a beloved parent had thumbed with affection.  Yes, and
+here in another part of the hall were the family horses and the family
+carriage that had gone so often back and forth from church with the happy
+brood of children, now scattered and gone to war.
+
+As Stephen reached his place beside the Judge, Mr. James's effects were
+being cried.  And, if glances could have killed, many a bidder would have
+dropped dead.  The heavy dining-room table which meant so much to the
+family went for a song to a young man recently come from Yankeeland,
+whose open boast it was--like Eliphalet's secret one--that he would one
+day grow rich enough to snap his fingers in the face of the Southern
+aristocrats.  Mr. James was not there.  But Mr. Catherwood, his face
+haggard and drawn, watched the sideboard he had given his wife on her
+silver wedding being sold to a pawnbroker.
+
+Stephen looked in vain for Colonel Carvel--for Virginia.  He did not want
+to see them there.  He knew by heart the list of things which had been
+taken from their house.  He understood the feeling which had sent the
+Judge here to bid them in.  And Stephen honored him the more.
+
+When the auctioneer came to the Carvel list, and the well-known name was
+shouted out, the crowd responded with a stir and pressed closer to the
+stand.  And murmurs were plainly heard in more than one direction.
+
+"Now, gentlemen, and ladies," said the seller, "this here is a genuine
+English Rothfield piano once belonging to Colonel Carvel, and the
+celebrated Judge Colfax of Kaintucky."  He lingered fondly over the
+names, that the impression might have time to sink deep.  "This here
+magnificent instrument's worth at the very least" (another pause) "twelve
+hundred dollars.  What am I bid?"
+
+He struck a base note of the keys, then a treble, and they vibrated in
+the heated air of the big hall.  Had he hit the little C of the top
+octave, the tinkle of that also might have been heard.
+
+"Gentlemen and ladies, we have to begin somewheres.  What am I bid?"
+
+A menacing murmur gave place to the accusing silence.  Some there were
+who gazed at the Rothfield with longing eyes, but who had no intention of
+committing social suicide.  Suddenly a voice, the rasp of which
+penetrated to St. Charles Street, came out with a bid.  The owner was a
+seedy man with a straw-colored, drunkard's mustache.  He was leaning
+against the body of Mrs. Russell's barouche (seized for sale), and those
+about him shrank away as from smallpox.  His hundred-dollar offer was
+followed by a hiss.  What followed next Stephen will always remember.
+When Judge Whipple drew himself up to his full six feet, that was a
+warning to those that knew him.  As he doubled the bid, the words came
+out with the aggressive distinctness of a man who through a long life has
+been used to opposition.  He with the gnawed yellow mustache pushed
+himself clear of the barouche, his smouldering cigar butt dropping to the
+floor.  But there were no hisses now.
+
+And this is how Judge Whipple braved public opinion once more.  As he
+stood there, defiant, many were the conjectures as to what he could wish
+to do with the piano of his old friend.  Those who knew the Judge (and
+there were few who did not) pictured to themselves the dingy
+little apartment where he lived, and smiled.  Whatever his detractors
+might have said of him, no one was ever heard to avow that he had bought
+or sold anything for gain.
+
+A tremor ran through the people.  Could it have been of admiration for
+the fine old man who towered there glaring defiance at those about him?
+"Give me a strong and consistent enemy," some great personage has said,
+"rather than a lukewarm friend."  Three score and five years the Judge
+had lived, and now some were beginning to suspect that he had a heart.
+Verily he had guarded his secret well.  But it was let out to many more
+that day, and they went home praising him who had once pronounced his
+name with bitterness.
+
+This is what happened.  Before he of the yellow mustache could pick up
+his cigar from the floor and make another bid, the Judge had cried out a
+sum which was the total of Colonel Carvel's assessment.  Many recall to
+this day how fiercely he frowned when the applause broke forth of itself;
+and when he turned to go they made a path for him, in admiration, the
+length of the hall, down which he stalked, looking neither to the right
+nor left.  Stephen followed him, thankful for the day which had brought
+him into the service of such a man.
+
+And so it came about that the other articles were returned to Colonel
+Carvel with the marshal's compliments, and put back into the cold parlor
+where they had stood for many years.  The men who brought them offered to
+put down the carpet, but by Virginia's orders the rolls were stood up in
+the corner, and the floor left bare.  And days passed into weeks, and no
+sign or message came from Judge Whipple in regard to the piano he had
+bought.  Virginia did not dare mention it to the Colonel.
+
+Where was it?  It had been carried by six sweating negroes up the narrow
+stairs into the Judge's office.  Stephen and Shadrach had by Mr.
+Whipple's orders cleared a corner of his inner office and bedroom of
+papers and books and rubbish, and there the bulky instrument was finally
+set up.  It occupied one-third of the space.  The Judge watched the
+proceeding grimly, choking now and again from the dust that was raised,
+yet uttering never a word.  He locked the lid when the van man handed him
+the key, and thrust that in his pocket.
+
+Stephen had of late found enough to do in St. Louis.  He was the kind of
+man to whom promotions came unsought, and without noise.  In the autumn
+he had been made a captain in the Halleck Guards of the State Militia, as
+a reward for his indefatigable work in the armories and his knowledge of
+tactics.  Twice his company had been called out at night, and once they
+made a campaign as far as the Merimec and captured a party of recruits
+who were destined for Jefferson Davis.  Some weeks passed before Mr.
+Brinsmade heard of his promotion and this exploit, and yet scarcely a day
+went by that he did not see the young man at the big hospital.  For
+Stephen helped in the work of the Sanitary Commission too, and so strove
+to make up in zeal for the service in the field which he longed to give.
+
+After Christmas Mr. and Mrs. Brinsmade moved out to their place on the
+Bellefontaine Road.  This was to force Anne to take a rest.  For the girl
+was worn out with watching at the hospitals, and with tending the
+destitute mothers and children from the ranks of the refugees.  The
+Brinsmade place was not far from the Fair Grounds,--now a receiving camp
+for the crude but eager regiments of the Northern states.  To Mr.
+Brinsmade's, when the day's duty was done, the young Union officers used
+to ride, and often there would be half a dozen of them to tea.  That
+house, and other great houses on the Bellefontaine Road with which this
+history has no occasion to deal, were as homes to many a poor fellow who
+would never see home again.  Sometimes Anne would gather together such
+young ladies of her acquaintance from the neighbor hood and the city as
+their interests and sympathies permitted to waltz with a Union officer,
+and there would be a little dance.  To these dances Stephen Brice was
+usually invited.
+
+One such occasion occurred on a Friday in January, and Mr. Brinsmade
+himself called in his buggy and drove Stephen to the country early in the
+afternoon.  He and Anne went for a walk along the river, the surface of
+which was broken by lumps of yellow ice.  Gray clouds hung low in the sky
+as they picked their way over the frozen furrows of the ploughed fields.
+The grass was all a yellow-brown, but the north wind which swayed the
+bare trees brought a touch of color to Anne's cheeks.  Before they
+realized where they were, they had nearly crossed the Bellegarde estate,
+and the house itself was come into view, standing high on the slope above
+the withered garden.  They halted.
+
+"The shutters are up," said Stephen.  "I understood that Mrs. Colfax had
+come out here not long a--"
+
+"She came out for a day just before Christina," said Anne, smiling, "and
+then she ran off to Kentucky.  I think she was afraid that she was one of
+the two women on the list of Sixty."
+
+"It must have been a blow to her pride when she found that she was not,"
+said Stephen, who had a keen remembrance of her conduct upon a certain
+Sunday not a year gone.
+
+Impelled by the same inclination, they walked in silence to the house and
+sat down on the edge of the porch.  The only motion in the view was the
+smoke from the slave quarters twisting in the wind, and the hurrying ice
+in the stream.
+
+"Poor Jinny!" said Anne, with a sigh, "how she loved to romp!  What good
+times we used to have here together!"
+
+"Do you think that she is unhappy?"  Stephen demanded, involuntarily.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Anne.  "How can you ask?  But you could not make her show
+it.  The other morning when she came out to our house I found her sitting
+at the piano.  I am sure there were tears in her eyes, but she would not
+let me see them.  She made some joke about Spencer Catherwood running
+away.  What do you think the Judge will do with that piano, Stephen?"
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"The day after they put it in his room he came in with a great black
+cloth, which he spread over it.  You cannot even see the feet."
+
+There was a silence.  And Anne, turning to him timidly, gave him a long,
+searching look.
+
+"It is growing late," she said.  "I think that we ought to go back."
+
+They went out by the long entrance road, through the naked woods.
+Stephen said little.  Only a little while before he had had one of those
+vivid dreams of Virginia which left their impression, but not their
+substance, to haunt him.  On those rare days following the dreams her
+spirit had its mastery over his.  He pictured her then with a glow on her
+face which was neither sadness nor mirth,--a glow that ministered to him
+alone.  And yet, he did not dare to think that he might have won her,
+even if politics and war had not divided them.
+
+When the merriment of the dance was at its height that evening, Stephen
+stood at the door of the long room, meditatively watching the bright
+gowns and the flash of gold on the uniforms as they flitted past.
+Presently the opposite door opened, and he heard Mr. Brinsmade's voice
+mingling with another, the excitable energy of which recalled some
+familiar episode.  Almost--so it seemed--at one motion, the owner of the
+voice had come out of the door and had seized Stephen's hand in a warm
+grasp,--a tall and spare figure in the dress of a senior officer.  The
+military frock, which fitted the man's character rather than the man,
+was carelessly open, laying bare a gold-buttoned white waistcoat and an
+expanse of shirt bosom which ended in a black stock tie.  The ends of the
+collar were apart the width of the red clipped beard, and the mustache
+was cropped straight along the line of the upper lip.  The forehead rose
+high, and was brushed carelessly free of the hair.  The nose was almost
+straight, but combative.  A fire fairly burned in the eyes.
+
+"The boy doesn't remember me," said the gentleman, in quick tones,
+smiling at Mr. Brinsmade.
+
+"Yes, sir, I do," Stephen made haste to answer.  He glanced at the star
+on the shoulder strap, and said.  "You are General Sherman."
+
+"First  rate!"  laughed  the  General, patting  him.  "First rate!"
+
+"Now in command at Camp Benton, Stephen," Mr. Brinsmade put in.  "Won't
+you sit down, General?"
+
+"No,"  said the General, emphatically waving away the chair.  "No, rather
+stand."  Then his keen face suddenly lighted with amusement,--and
+mischief, Stephen thought.  "So you've heard of me since we met, sir?"
+"Yes, General."
+
+"Humph!  Guess you heard I was crazy," said the General, in his downright
+way.
+
+Stephen was struck dumb.
+
+"He's been reading the lies in the newspapers too, Brinsmade," the
+General went on rapidly.  "I'll make 'em eat their newspapers for saying
+I was crazy.  That's the Secretary of War's doings.  Ever tell you what
+Cameron did, Brinsmade?  He and his party were in Louisville last fall,
+when I was serving in Kentucky, and came to my room in the Galt House.
+Well, we locked the door, and Miller sent us up a good lunch and wine,
+After lunch, the Secretary lay on my bed, and we talked things over.
+He asked me what I thought about things in Kentucky.  I told him.  I got
+a map.  I said, 'Now, Mr. Secretary, here is the whole Union line from
+the Potomac to Kansas.  Here's McClellan in the East with one hundred
+miles of front.  Here's Fremont in the West with one hundred miles.  Here
+we are in Kentucky, in the centre, with three hundred miles to defend.
+McClellan has a hundred thousand men, Fremont has sixty thousand.  You
+give us fellows with over three hundred miles only eighteen thousand.'
+'How many do you want?' says Cameron, still on the bed.  'Two hundred
+thousand before we get through,' said I.  Cameron pitched up his hands
+in the air.  'Great God?' says he, 'where are they to come from?'  'The
+northwest is chuck full of regiments you fellows at Washington won't
+accept,' said I.  'Mark my words, Mr. Secretary, you'll need 'em all and
+more before we get done with this Rebellion.'  Well, sir, he was very
+friendly before we finished, and I thought the thing was all thrashed
+out.  No, sir! he goes back to Washington and gives it out that I'm
+crazy, and want two hundred thousand men in Kentucky.  Then I am ordered
+to report to Halleck in Missouri here, and he calls me back from Sedalia
+because he believes the lies."
+
+Stephen, who had in truth read the stories in question a month or two
+before, could not conceal his embarrassment He looked at the man in front
+of him,--alert, masterful intelligent, frank to any stranger who took his
+fancy,--and wondered how any one who had talked to him could believe
+them.
+
+Mr. Brinsmade smiled.  "They have to print something, General," he said.
+
+"I'll give 'em something to print later on," answered the General,
+grimly.  Then his expression changed.  "Brinsmade, you fellows did have a
+session with Fremont, didn't you?  Anderson sent me over here last
+September, and the first man I ran across at the Planters' House was
+Appleton.  '--What are you in town for?' says he.  'To see Fremont,' I
+said.  You ought to have heard Appleton laugh.  'You don't think
+Fremont'll see you, do you?' says he.  'Why not?'  'Well,' says Tom, 'go
+'round to his palace at six to-morrow morning and bribe that Hungarian
+prince who runs his body-guard to get you a good place in the line of
+senators and governors and first citizens, and before nightfall you may
+get a sight of him, since you come from Anderson.  Not one man in a
+hundred,' says Appleton, I not one man in a hundred, reaches his chief-
+of-staff.' Next morning," the General continued in a staccato which was
+often his habit, "had breakfast before daybreak and went 'round there.
+Place just swarming with Californians--army contracts."  (The General
+sniffed.)  Saw Fremont.  Went back to hotel.  More Californians, and by
+gad--old Baron Steinberger with his nose hanging over the register."
+
+"Fremont was a little difficult to get at, General," said Mr. Brinsmade.
+"Things were confused and discouraged when those first contracts were
+awarded.  Fremont was a good man, and it wasn't his fault that the
+inexperience of his quartermasters permitted some of those men to get
+rich."
+
+"No," said the General.  "His fault!  Certainly not.  Good man!  To be
+sure he was--didn't get along with Blair.  These court-martials you're
+having here now have stirred up the whole country.  I guess we'll hear
+now how those fortunes were made.  To listen to those witnesses lie about
+each other on the stand is better than the theatre."
+
+Stephen laughed at the comical and vivid manner in which the General set
+this matter forth.  He himself had been present one day of the sittings
+of the court-martial when one of the witnesses on the prices of mules was
+that same seedy man with the straw-colored mustache who had bid for
+Virginia's piano against the Judge.
+
+"Come, Stephen," said the General, abruptly, "run and snatch one of those
+pretty girls from my officers.  They're having more than their share."
+
+"They deserve more, sir," answered Stephen.  Whereupon the General laid
+his hand impulsively on the young man's shoulder, divining what Stephen
+did not say.
+
+"Nonsense!" said be; "you are doing the work in this war, not we.
+We do the damage--you repair it.  If it were not for Mr. Brinsmade and
+you gentlemen who help him, where would our Western armies be?  Don't you
+go to the front yet a while, young man.  We need the best we have in
+reserve."  He glanced critically at Stephen.  "You've had military
+training of some sort?"
+
+"He's a captain in the Halleck Guards, sir," said Mr. Brinsmade,
+generously, "and the best drillmaster we've had in this city.  He's seen
+service, too, General."
+
+Stephen reddened furiously and started to protest, when the General
+cried:--
+
+"It's more than I have in this war.  Come, come, I knew he was a soldier.
+Let's see what kind of a strategist he'll make.  Brinsmade, have you got
+such a thing as a map?"  Mr. Brinsmade had, and led the way back into the
+library.  The General shut the door, lighted a cigar with a single
+vigorous stroke of a match, and began to smoke with quick puffs.  Stephen
+was puzzled how to receive the confidences the General was giving out
+with such freedom.
+
+When the map was laid on the table, the General drew a pencil from his
+pocket and pointed to the state of Kentucky.  Then he drew a line from
+Columbus to Bowling Green, through Forts Donelson and Henry.
+
+"Now, Stephen," said he, "there's the Rebel line.  Show me the proper
+place to break it."
+
+Stephen hesitated a while, and then pointed at the centre.
+
+"Good!"  said the General.  "Very good!"  He drew a heavy line across the
+first, and it ran almost in the bed of the Tennessee River.  He swung on
+Mr. Brinsmade.  "Very question Halleck asked me the other day, and that's
+how I answered it.  Now, gentlemen, there's a man named Grant down in
+that part of the country.  Keep your eyes on him.  Ever heard of him,
+Brinsmade?  He used to live here once, and a year ago he was less than
+I was.  Now he's a general."
+
+The recollection of the scene in the street by the Arsenal that May
+morning not a year gone came to Stephen with a shock.
+
+"I saw him," he cried; "he was Captain Grant that lived on the Gravois
+Road.  But surely this can't be the same man who seized Paducah and was
+in that affair at Belmont."
+
+"By gum!" said the General, laughing.  "Don't wonder you're surprised.
+Grant has stuff in him.  They kicked him around Springfield awhile, after
+the war broke out, for a military carpet-bagger.  Then they gave him for
+a regiment the worst lot of ruffians you ever laid eyes on.  He fixed
+'em.  He made 'em walk the plank.  He made 'em march halfway across the
+state instead of taking the cars the Governor offered.  Belmont!  I guess
+he is the man that chased the Rebs out of Belmont.  Then his boys broke
+loose when they got into the town.  That wasn't Grant's fault.  The Rebs
+came back and chased 'em out into their boats on the river.  Brinsmade,
+you remember hearing about that.
+
+"Grant did the coolest thing you ever saw.  He sat on his horse at the top
+of the bluff while the boys fell over each other trying to get on the
+boat.  Yes, sir, he sat there, disgusted, on his horse, smoking a cigar,
+with the Rebs raising pandemonium all around him.  And then, sir," cried
+the General, excitedly, "what do you think he did?  Hanged if he didn't
+force his horse right on to his haunches, slide down the whole length of
+the bank and ride him across a teetering plank on to the steamer.  And
+the Rebs just stood on the bank and stared.  They were so astonished
+they didn't even shoot the man.  You watch Grant," said the General.
+"And  now, Stephen," he added, "just you run off and take hold of the
+prettiest girl you can find.  If any of my boys object, say I sent you."
+
+The next Monday Stephen had a caller.  It was little Tiefel, now a first
+lieutenant with a bristly beard and tanned face, come to town on a few
+days' furlough.  He had been with Lyon at Wilson's Creek, and he had a
+sad story to tell of how he found poor Richter, lying stark on that
+bloody field, with a smile of peace upon his face.  Strange that he
+should at length have been killed by a sabre!
+
+It was a sad meeting for those two, since each reminded the other of a
+dear friend they would see no more on earth.  They went out to sup
+together in the German style; and gradually, over his beer, Tiefel forgot
+his sorrow.  Stephen listened with an ache to the little man's tales of
+the campaigns he had been through.  So that presently Tiefel cried out:
+
+"Why, my friend, you are melancholy as an owl.  I will tell you a funny
+story.  Did you ever hear of one General Sherman?  He that they say is
+crazy?"
+
+"He is no more crazy than I am," said Stephen, warmly--
+
+"Is he not?"  answered Tiefel, then I will show you a mistake.  You
+recall last November he was out to Sedalia to inspect the camp there, and
+he sleeps in a little country store where I am quartered.  Now up gets
+your General Sherman in the middle of the night,--midnight,--and marches
+up and down between the counters, and waves his arms.  So, says he, 'land
+so,' says he, 'Sterling Price will be here, and Steele here, and this
+column will take that road, and so-and-so's a damned fool.  Is not that
+crazy?  So he walks up and down for three eternal hours.  Says he, 'Pope
+has no business to be at Osterville, and Steele here at Sedalia with his
+regiments all over the place.  They must both go into camp at La Mine
+River, and form brigades and divisions, that the troops may be handled.'"
+
+"If that's insanity," cried Stephen so strongly as to surprise the little
+man; then I wish we had more insane generals.  It just shows how a
+malicious rumor will spread.  What Sherman said about Pope's and Steele's
+forces is true as Gospel, and if you ever took the trouble to look into
+that situation, Tiefel, you would see it."  And Stephen brought down his
+mug on the table with a crash that made the bystanders jump.
+
+"Himmel!" exclaimed little Tiefel.  But he spoke in admiration.
+
+It was not a month after that that Sherman's prophecy of the quiet
+general who had slid down the bluff at Belmont came true.  The whole
+country bummed with Grant's praises.  Moving with great swiftness and
+secrecy up the Tennessee, in company with the gunboats of Commodore
+Foote, he had pierced the Confederate line at the very point Sherman had
+indicated.  Fort Henry had fallen, and Grant was even then moving to
+besiege Donelson.
+
+Mr. Brinsmade prepared to leave at once for the battlefield, taking with
+him too Paducah physicians and nurses.  All day long the boat was loading
+with sanitary stores and boxes of dainties for the wounded.  It was muggy
+and wet--characteristic of that winter--as Stephen pushed through the
+drays on the slippery levee to the landing.
+
+He had with him a basket his mother had put up.  He also bore a message
+to Mr. Brinsmade from the Judge It was while he was picking his way along
+the crowded decks that he ran into General Sherman.  The General seized
+him unceremoniously by the shoulder.
+
+"Good-by, Stephen," he said.
+
+"Good-by, General," said Stephen, shifting his basket to shake hands.
+"Are you going away?"
+
+"Ordered to Paducah," said the General.  He pulled Stephen off the guards
+into an empty cabin.  "Brice," said he, earnestly, "I haven't forgotten
+how you saved young Brinsmade at Camp Jackson.  They tell me that you are
+useful here.  I say, don't go in unless you have to.  I don't mean force,
+you understand.  But when you feel that you can go in, come to me or
+write me a letter.  That is," he added, seemingly inspecting Stephen's
+white teeth with approbation, "if you're not afraid to serve under a
+crazy man."
+
+It has been said that the General liked the lack of effusiveness of
+Stephen's reply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+ELIPHALET PLAYS HIS TRUMPS
+
+Summer was come again.  Through interminable days, the sun beat down upon
+the city; and at night the tortured bricks flung back angrily the heat
+with which he had filled them.  Great battles had been fought, and vast
+armies were drawing breath for greater ones to come.
+
+"Jinny," said the Colonel one day, "as we don't seem to be much use in
+town, I reckon we may as well go to Glencoe."
+
+Virginia, threw her arms around her father's neck.  For many months she
+had seen what the Colonel himself was slow to comprehend--that his
+usefulness was gone.  The days melted into weeks, and Sterling Price and
+his army of liberation failed to come.  The vigilant Union general and
+his aides had long since closed all avenues to the South.  For, one fine
+morning toward the end of the previous summer, when the Colonel was
+contemplating a journey, he had read that none might leave the city
+without a pass, whereupon he went hurriedly to the office of the Provost
+Marshal.  There he had found a number of gentlemen in the same plight,
+each waving a pass made out by the Provost Marshal's clerks, and waiting
+for that officer's signature.  The Colonel also procured one of
+these, and fell into line.  The Marshal gazed at the crowd, pulled off
+his coat, and readily put his name to the passes of several gentlemen
+going east.  Next came Mr. Bub Ballington, whom the Colonel knew, but
+pretended not to.
+
+"Going to Springfield?" asked the Marshal, genially.
+
+"Yes," said Bub.
+
+"Not very profitable to be a minute-man, eh?"  in the same tone.
+
+The Marshal signs his name, Mr, Ballington trying not to look indignant
+as he makes for the door.  A small silver bell rings on the Marshal's
+desk, the one word: "Spot!" breaks the intense silence, which is one way
+of saying that Mr. Ballington is detained, and will probably be lodged
+that night at Government expense.
+
+"Well, Colonel Carvel, what can I do for you this morning?"  asked the
+Marshal, genially.
+
+The Colonel pushed back his hat and wiped his brow.  "I reckon I'll wait
+till next week, Captain," said Mr. Carvel.  "It's pretty hot to travel
+just now."
+
+The Provost Marshal smiled sweetly.  There were many in the office who
+would have liked to laugh, but it did not pay to laugh at some people.
+Colonel Carvel was one of them.
+
+In the proclamation of martial law was much to make life less endurable
+than ever.  All who were convicted by a court-martial of being rebels
+were to have property confiscated, and slaves set free.  Then there was a
+certain oath to be taken by all citizens who did not wish to have
+guardians appointed over their actions.  There were many who swallowed
+this oath and never felt any ill effects.  Mr. Jacob Cluyme was one, and
+came away feeling very virtuous.  It was not unusual for Mr. Cluyme to
+feel virtuous.  Mr. Hopper did not have indigestion after taking it, but
+Colonel Carvel would sooner have eaten, gooseberry pie, which he had
+never tasted but once.
+
+That summer had worn away, like a monster which turns and gives hot gasps
+when you think it has expired.  It took the Arkansan just a month, under
+Virginia's care,  to become well enough to be sent to a Northern prison
+He was not precisely a Southern gentleman, and he went to sleep over the
+"Idylls of the King."  But he was admiring, and grateful, and wept when
+he went off to the boat with the provost's guard, destined for a Northern
+prison.  Virginia wept too.  He had taken her away from her aunt (who
+would have nothing to do with him), and had given her occupation.  She
+nor her father never tired of hearing his rough tales of Price's rough
+army.
+
+His departure was about the time when suspicions were growing set.  The
+favor had caused comment and trouble, hence there was no hope of giving
+another sufferer the same comfort.  The cordon was drawn tighter.  One
+of the mysterious gentlemen who had been seen in the vicinity of Colonel
+Carvel's house was arrested on the ferry, but he had contrived to be rid
+of the carpet-sack in which certain precious letters were carried.
+
+Throughout the winter, Mr. Hopper's visits to Locust Street had continued
+at intervals of painful regularity.  It is not necessary to dwell upon
+his brilliant powers of conversation, nor to repeat the platitudes which
+he repeated, for there was no significance in Mr. Hopper's tales, not a
+particle.  The Colonel had found that out, and was thankful.  His manners
+were better; his English decidedly better.
+
+It was for her father's sake, of course, that Virginia bore with him.
+Such is the appointed lot of women.  She tried to be just, and it
+occurred to her that she had never before been just.  Again and again she
+repeated to herself that Eliphalet's devotion to the Colonel at this low
+ebb of his fortunes had something in it of which she did not suspect him.
+She had a class contempt for Mr. Hopper as an uneducated Yankee and a
+person of commercial ideals.  But now he was showing virtues,--if virtues
+they were,--and she tried to give him the benefit of the doubt.  With his
+great shrewdness and business ability, why did he not take advantage of
+the many opportunities the war gave to make a fortune?  For Virginia had
+of late been going to the store with the Colonel,--who spent his mornings
+turning over piles of dusty papers, and Mr. Hopper had always been at his
+desk.
+
+After this, Virginia even strove to be kind to him, but it was uphill
+work.  The front door never closed after one of his visits that suspicion
+was not left behind.  Antipathy would assert itself.  Could it be that
+there was a motive under all this plotting?  He struck her inevitably as
+the kind who would be content to mine underground to attain an end.  The
+worst she could think of him was that he wished to ingratiate himself
+now, in the hope that, when the war was ended, he might become a partner
+in Mr. Carvel's business.  She had put even this away as unworthy of her.
+
+Once she had felt compelled to speak to her father on the subject.
+
+"I believe I did him an injustice, Pa," she said.  "Not that I like him
+any better now.  I must be honest about that.  I simply can't like him.
+But I do think that if he had been as unscrupulous as I thought, he would
+have deserted you long ago for something more profitable.  He would not
+be sitting in the office day after day making plans for the business when
+the war is over."
+
+She remembered how sadly he had smiled at her over the top of his paper.
+
+"You are a good girl, Jinny," he said.
+
+Toward the end of July of that second summer riots broke out in the city,
+and simultaneously a bright spot appeared on Virginia's horizon.  This
+took the form, for Northerners, of a guerilla scare, and an order was
+promptly issued for the enrollment of all the able-bodied men in the ten
+wards as militia, subject to service in the state, to exterminate the
+roving bands.  Whereupon her Britannic Majesty became extremely popular,
+--even with some who claimed for a birthplace the Emerald Isle.  Hundreds
+who heretofore had valued but lightly their British citizenship made
+haste to renew their allegiance; and many sought the office of the
+English Consul whose claims on her Majesty's protection were vague, to
+say the least.  Broken heads and scandal followed.  For the first time,
+when Virginia walked to the store with her father, Eliphalet was not
+there.  It was strange indeed that Virginia defended him.
+
+"I don't blame him for not wanting to fight for the Yankees," she said.
+
+The Colonel could not resist a retort.
+
+"Then why doesn't he fight for the South he asked"
+
+"Fight for the South!" cried the young lady, scornfully.  "Mr. Hopper
+fight?  I reckon the South wouldn't have him."
+
+"I reckon not, too," said the Colonel, dryly.
+
+For the following week curiosity prompted Virginia to take that walk with
+the Colonel.  Mr. Hopper being still absent, she helped him to sort the
+papers--those grimy reminders of a more prosperous time gone by.  Often
+Mr. Carvel would run across one which seemed to bring some incident to
+his mind; for he would drop it absently on his desk, his hand seeking his
+chin, and remain for half an hour lost in thought.  Virginia would not
+disturb him.
+
+Meanwhile there had been inquiries for Mr. Hopper.  The Colonel answered
+them all truthfully--generally with that dangerous suavity for which he
+was noted.  Twice a seedy man with a gnawed yellow mustache had come in
+to ask Eliphalet's whereabouts.  On the second occasion this individual
+became importunate.
+
+"You don't know nothin' about him, you say?"  he demanded.
+
+"No," said the Colonel.
+
+The man took a shuffle forward.
+
+"My name's Ford," he said.  "I 'low I kin 'lighten you a little."
+
+"Good day, sir," said the Colonel.
+
+"I guess you'll like to hear what I've got to say."
+
+"Ephum," said Mr. Carvel in his natural voice, "show this man out."
+
+Mr. Ford slunk out without Ephum's assistance.  But he half turned at the
+door, and shot back a look that frightened Virginia.
+
+"Oh, Pa," she cried, in alarm, "what did he mean?"
+
+"I couldn't tell you, Jinny," he answered.  But she noticed that he was
+very thoughtful as they walked home.  The next morning Eliphalet had not
+returned, but a corporal and guard were waiting to search the store for
+him.  The Colonel read the order, and invited them in with hospitality.
+He even showed them the way upstairs, and presently Virginia heard them
+all tramping overhead among the bales.  Her eye fell upon the paper they
+had brought, which lay unfolded on her father's desk.  It was signed
+Stephen A. Brice, Enrolling Officer.
+
+That very afternoon they moved to Glencoe, and Ephum was left in sole
+charge of the store.  At Glencoe, far from the hot city and the cruel
+war, began a routine of peace.  Virginia was a child again, romping in
+the woods and fields beside her father.  The color came back to her
+cheeks once more, and the laughter into her voice.  The two of them, and
+Ned and Mammy, spent a rollicking hour in the pasture the freedom of
+which Dick had known so long, before the old horse was caught and brought
+back into bondage.  After that Virginia took long drives with her father,
+and coming home, they would sit in the summer house high above the
+Merimec, listening to the crickets' chirp, and watching the day fade upon
+the water.  The Colonel, who had always detested pipes, learned to smoke
+a corncob.  He would sit by the hour, with his feet on the rail of the
+porch and his hat tilted back, while Virginia read to him.  Poe and
+Wordsworth and Scott he liked, but Tennyson was his favorite.  Such
+happiness could not last.
+
+One afternoon when Virginia was sitting in the summer house alone, her
+thoughts wandering back, as they sometimes did, to another afternoon she
+had spent there,--it seemed so long ago,--when she saw Mammy Easter
+coming toward her.
+
+"Honey, dey's comp'ny up to de house.  Mister Hopper's done arrived.
+He's on de porch, talkin' to your Pa.  Lawsey, look wha he come!"
+
+In truth, the solid figure of Eliphalet himself was on the path some
+twenty yards behind her.  His hat was in his hand; his hair was plastered
+down more neatly than ever, and his coat was a faultless and sober
+creation of a Franklin Avenue tailor.  He carried a cane, which was
+unheard of.  Virginia sat upright, and patted her skirts with a gesture
+of annoyance--what she felt was anger, resentment.  Suddenly she rose,
+swept past Mammy, and met him ten paces from the summer house.
+
+"How-dy-do, Miss Virginia," he cried pleasantly.  "Your father had a
+notion you might be here."  He said fayther.
+
+Virginia gave him her hand limply.  Her greeting would have frozen a man
+of ardent temperament.  But it was not precisely ardor that Eliphalet
+showed.  The girl paused and examined him swiftly.  There was something
+in the man's air to-day.
+
+"So you were not caught?" she said.
+
+Her words seemed to relieve some tension in him.  He laughed noiselessly.
+
+"I just guess I wahn't."
+
+"How did you escape?"  she asked, looking at him curiously.
+
+"Well, I did, first of all.  You're considerable smart, Miss Jinny, but
+I'll bet you can't tell me where I was, now."
+
+"I do not care to know.  The place might save you again."
+
+He showed his disappointment.  "I cal'lated it might interest you to know
+how I dodged the Sovereign State of Missouri.  General Halleck made an
+order that released a man from enrolling on payment of ten dollars.  I
+paid.  Then I was drafted into the Abe Lincoln Volunteers; I paid a
+substitute.  And so here I be, exercising life, and liberty, and the
+pursuit of happiness."
+
+"So you bought yourself free?"  said Virginia.  "If your substitute gets
+killed, I suppose you will have cause for congratulation."
+
+Eliphalet laughed, and pulled down his cuffs.  "That's his lookout, I
+cal'late," said he.  He glanced at the girl in a way that made her
+vaguely uneasy.  She turned from him, back toward the summer house.
+Eliphalet's eyes smouldered as they rested upon her figure.  He took a
+step forward.
+
+"Miss Jinny?" he said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I've heard considerable about the beauties of this place.  Would you
+mind showing me 'round a bit?" Virginia started.  It was his tone now.
+Not since that first evening in Locust Street had it taken on such
+assurance,  And yet she could not be impolite to a guest.
+
+"Certainly not," she replied, but without looking up.  Eliphalet led the
+way.  He came to the summer house, glanced around it with apparent
+satisfaction, and put his foot on the moss-grown step.  Virginia did a
+surprising thing.  She leaped quickly into the doorway before him, and
+stood facing him, framed in the climbing roses.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Hopper!" she cried.  "Please, not in here."  He drew back,
+staring in astonishment at the crimson in her face.
+
+"Why not?" he asked suspiciously--almost brutally.  She had been groping
+wildly for excuses, and found none.
+
+"Because," she said, "because I ask you not to."  With dignity: "That
+should be sufficient."
+
+"Well," replied Eliphalet, with an abortive laugh, "that's funny, now.
+Womenkind get queer notions, which I cal'late we've got to respect and
+put up with all our lives--eh?"
+
+Her anger flared at his leer and at his broad way of gratifying her whim.
+And she was more incensed than ever at his air of being at home--it was
+nothing less.
+
+The man's whole manner was an insult.  She strove still to hide her
+resentment.
+
+"There is a walk along the bluff," she said, coldly, "where the view is
+just as good."
+
+But she purposely drew him into the right-hand path, which led, after a
+little, back to the house.  Despite her pace he pressed forward to her
+side.
+
+"Miss Jinny," said he, precipitately, "did I ever strike you as a
+marrying man?"
+
+Virginia stopped, and put her handkerchief to her face, the impulse
+strong upon her to laugh.  Eliphalet was suddenly transformed again into
+the common commercial Yankee.  He was in love, and had come to ask her
+advice.  She might have known it.
+
+"I never thought of you as of the marrying kind, Mr. Hopper," she
+answered, her voice quivering.
+
+Indeed, he was irresistibly funny as he stood hot and ill at ease.  The
+Sunday coat bore witness to his increasing portliness by creasing across
+from the buttons; his face, fleshy and perspiring, showed purple veins,
+and the little eyes receded comically, like a pig's.
+
+"Well, I've been thinking serious of late about getting married," he
+continued, slashing the rose bushes with his stick.  "I don't cal'late to
+be a sentimental critter.  I'm not much on high-sounding phrases, and
+such things, but I'd give you my word I'd make a good husband."
+
+"Please be careful of those roses, Mr. Hopper."
+
+"Beg pardon," said Eliphalet.  He began to lose track of his tenses--that
+was the only sign he gave of perturbation.  "When I come to St. Louis
+without a cent, Miss Jinny, I made up my mind I'd be a rich man before
+I left it.  If I was to die now, I'd have kept that promise.  I'm not
+thirty-four, and I cal'late I've got as much money in a safe place as a
+good many men you call rich.  I'm not saying what I've got, mind you.
+All in proper time.
+
+"I'm a pretty steady kind.  I've stopped chewing--there was a time when I
+done that.  And I don't drink nor smoke."
+
+"That is all very commendable, Mr. Hopper," Virginia said, stifling a
+rebellious titter.  "But,--but why did you give up chewing?"
+
+"I am informed that the ladies are against it," said Eliphalet,--"dead
+against it.  You wouldn't like it in a husband, now, would you?"
+
+This time the laugh was not to be put down.  "I confess I shouldn't," she
+said.
+
+"Thought so," he replied, as one versed.  His tones took on a nasal
+twang.  "Well, as I was saying, I've about got ready to settle down, and
+I've had my eye on the lady this seven years."
+
+"Marvel of constancy!" said Virginia.  "And the lady?"
+
+"The lady," said Eliphalet, bluntly, "is you."  He glanced at her
+bewildered face and went on rapidly: "You pleased me the first day I set
+eyes on you in the store I said to myself, 'Hopper, there's the one for
+you to marry.'  I'm plain, but my folks was good people.  I set to work
+right then to make a fortune for you, Miss Jinny.  You've just what I
+need.  I'm a plain business man with no frills.  You'll do the frills.
+You're the kind that was raised in the lap of luxury.  You'll need a man
+with a fortune, and a big one; you're the sort to show it off.  I've got
+the foundations of that fortune, and the proof of it right here.  And I
+tell you,"--his jaw was set,--"I tell you that some day Eliphalet Hopper
+will be one of the richest men in the West."
+
+He had stopped, facing her in the middle of the way, his voice strong,
+his confidence supreme.  At first she had stared at him in dumb wonder.
+Then, as she began to grasp the meaning of his harangue, astonishment was
+still dominant,--sheer astonishment.  She scarcely listened.  But, as he
+finished, the thatch of the summer house caught her eye.  A vision arose
+of a man beside whom Eliphalet was not worthy to crawl.  She thought of
+Stephen as he had stood that evening in the sunset, and this proposal
+seemed a degradation.  This brute dared to tempt her with money.
+Scalding words rose to her lips.  But she caught the look on Eliphalet's
+face, and she knew that he would not understand.  This was one who rose
+and fell, who lived and loved and hated and died and was buried by--
+money.
+
+For a second she looked into his face as one who escapes a pit gazes over
+the precipice, and shuddered.  As for Eliphalet, let it not be thought
+that he had no passion.  This was the moment for which he had lived since
+the day he had first seen her and been scorned in the store.  That type
+of face, that air,--these were the priceless things he would buy with his
+money.  Crazed with the very violence of his long-pent desire, he seized
+her hand.  She wrung it free again.
+
+"How--how dare you!" she cried.
+
+He staggered back, and stood for a moment motionless, as though stunned.
+Then, slowly, a light crept into his little eyes which haunted her for
+many a day.
+
+"You--won't--marry me?" he said.
+
+"Oh, how dare you ask me!" exclaimed Virginia, her face burning with
+the shame of it.  She was standing with her hands behind her, her back
+against a great walnut trunk, the crusted branches of which hung over the
+bluff.  Even as he looked at her, Eliphalet lost his head, and
+indiscretion entered his soul.
+
+"You must!" he said hoarsely.  "You must!  You've got no notion of my
+money, I say."
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "can't you understand?  If you owned the whole of
+California, I would not marry you."  Suddenly he became very cool.  He
+slipped his hand into a pocket, as one used to such a motion, and drew
+out some papers.
+
+"I cal'late you ain't got much idea of the situation, Miss Carvel," he
+said; "the wheels have been a-turning lately.  You're poor, but I guess
+you don't know how poor you are,--eh?  The Colonel's a man of honor,
+ain't he?"
+
+For her life she could not have answered,--nor did she even know why she
+stayed to listen.
+
+"Well," he said, "after all, there ain't much use in your lookin' over
+them papers.  A woman wouldn't know.  I'll tell you what they say: they
+say that if I choose, I am Carvel & Company."
+
+The little eyes receded, and he waited a moment, seemingly to prolong a
+physical delight in the excitement and suffering of a splendid creature.
+The girl was breathing fast and deep.
+
+"I cal'late you despise me, don't you?"  he went on, as if that, too,
+gave him pleasure.  "But I tell you the Colonel's a beggar but for me.
+Go and ask him if I'm lying.  All you've got to do is to say you'll be my
+wife, and I tear these notes in two.  They go over the bluff."  (He made
+the motion with his hands.)  "Carvel & Company's an old firm,--a
+respected firm.  You wouldn't care to see it go out of the family, I
+cal'late."
+
+He paused again, triumphant.  But she did none of the things he expected.
+She said, simply:--"Will you please follow me, Mr. Hopper."
+
+And he followed her,--his shrewdness gone, for once,
+
+Save for the rise and fall of her shoulders she seemed calm.  The path
+wound through a jungle of waving sunflowers and led into the shade in
+front of the house.  There was the Colonel sitting on the porch.  His
+pipe lay with its scattered ashes on the boards, and his head was bent
+forward, as though listening.  When he saw the two, he rose expectantly,
+and went forward to meet them.  Virginia stopped before him.
+
+"Pa," she said, "is it true that you have borrowed money from this man?"
+
+Eliphalet had seen Mr. Carvel angry once, and his soul had quivered.
+Terror, abject terror, seized him now, so that his knees smote together.
+As well stare into the sun as into the Colonel's face.  In one stride he
+had a hand in the collar of Eliphalet's new coat, the other pointing down
+the path.
+
+"It takes just a minute to walk to that fence, sir," he said sternly.
+"If you are any longer about it, I reckon you'll never get past it.
+You're a cowardly hound, sir!"  Mr. Hopper's gait down the flagstones was
+an invention of his own.  It was neither a walk, nor a trot, nor a run,
+but a sort of sliding amble, such as is executed in nightmares.  Singing
+in his head was the famous example of the eviction of Babcock from the
+store,--the only time that the Colonel's bullet had gone wide.  And down
+in the small of his back Eliphalet listened for the crack of a pistol,
+and feared that a clean hole might be bored there any minute.  Once
+outside, he took to the white road, leaving a trail of dust behind him
+that a wagon might have raised.  Fear lent him wings, but neglected to
+lift his feet.
+
+The Colonel passed his arm around his daughter, and pulled his goatee
+thoughtfully.  And Virginia, glancing shyly upward, saw a smile in the
+creases about his mouth: She smiled, too, and then the tears hid him from
+her.
+
+Strange that the face which in anger withered cowards and made men look
+grave, was capable of such infinite tenderness,--tenderness and sorrow.
+The Colonel took Virginia in his arms, and she sobbed against his
+shoulder, as of old.
+
+"Jinny, did he--?"
+
+"Yes--"
+
+"Lige was right, and--and you, Jinny--I should never have trusted him.
+The sneak!"
+
+Virginia raised her head.  The sun was slanting in yellow bars through
+the branches of the great trees, and a robin's note rose above the bass
+chorus of the frogs.  In the pauses, as she listened, it seemed as if she
+could hear the silver sound of the river over the pebbles far below.
+
+"Honey," said the Colonel,--"I reckon we're just as poor as white trash."
+
+Virginia smiled through her tears.
+
+"Honey," he said again, after a pause," I must keep my word and let him
+have the business."
+
+She did not reproach him.
+
+"There is a little left, a very little," he continued slowly, painfully.
+"I thank God that it is yours.  It was left you by Becky--by your mother.
+It is in a railroad company in New York, and safe, Jinny."
+
+"Oh, Pa, you know that I do not care," she cried.  "It shall be yours
+and mine together.  And we shall live out here and be happy."
+
+But she glanced anxiously at him nevertheless.  He was in his familiar
+posture of thought, his legs slightly apart, his felt hat pushed back,
+stroking his goatee.  But his clear gray eyes were troubled as they
+sought hers, and she put her hand to her breast.
+
+"Virginia," he said, "I fought for my country once, and I reckon I'm some
+use yet awhile.  It isn't right that I should idle here, while the South
+needs me,  Your Uncle Daniel is fifty-eight, and Colonel of a
+Pennsylvania regiment.--Jinny, I have to go."
+
+Virginia said nothing.  It was in her blood as well as his.  The Colonel
+had left his young wife, to fight in Mexico; he had come home to lay
+flowers on her grave.  She knew that he thought of this; and, too, that
+his heart was rent at leaving her.  She put her hands on his shoulders,
+and he stooped to kiss her trembling lips.
+
+They walked out together to the summer-house, and stood watching the
+glory of the light on the western hills.  "Jinn," said the Colonel,
+"I reckon you will have to go to your Aunt Lillian.  It--it will be hard.
+But I know that my girl can take care of herself.  In case--in case I do
+not come back, or occasion should arise, find Lige.  Let him take you to
+your Uncle Daniel.  He is fond of you, and will be all alone in Calvert
+House when the war is over.  And I reckon that is all I have to say.
+I won't pry into your heart, honey.  If you love Clarence, marry him.
+I like the boy, and I believe he will quiet down into a good man."
+
+Virginia did not answer, but reached out for her father's hand and held
+its fingers locked tight in her own.  From the kitchen the sound of Ned's
+voice rose in the still evening air.
+
+         "Sposin' I was to go to N' Orleans an' take sick and die,
+          Laik a bird into de country ma spirit would fly."
+
+And after a while down the path the red and yellow of Mammy Easter's
+bandanna was seen.
+
+"Supper, Miss Jinny.  Laws, if I ain't ramshacked de premises fo' you
+bof.  De co'n bread's gittin' cold."
+
+That evening the Colonel and Virginia thrust a few things into her little
+leather bag they had chosen together in London.  Virginia had found a
+cigar, which she hid until they went down to the porch, and there she
+gave it to him; when he lighted the match she saw that his hand shook.
+
+Half an hour later he held her in his arms at the gate, and she heard his
+firm tread die in the dust of the road.  The South had claimed him at
+last.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+So much for Democracy when it becomes a catchword
+They have to print something
+
+
+
+
+
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