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Title:  Clarence

Author:  Bret Harte

May, 2001  [Etext #2635]


****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Clarence, by Bret Harte****
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CLARENCE

by Bret Harte




PART I.



CHAPTER I.



As Clarence Brant, President of the Robles Land Company, and
husband of the rich widow of John Peyton, of the Robles Ranche,
mingled with the outgoing audience of the Cosmopolitan Theatre, at
San Francisco, he elicited the usual smiling nods and recognition
due to his good looks and good fortune.  But as he hurriedly
slipped through the still lingering winter's rain into the smart
coupe that was awaiting him, and gave the order "Home," the word
struck him with a peculiarly ironical significance.  His home was a
handsome one, and lacked nothing in appointment and comfort, but he
had gone to the theatre to evade its hollow loneliness.  Nor was it
because his wife was not there, for he had a miserable consciousness
that her temporary absence had nothing to do with his homelessness.
The distraction of the theatre over, that dull, vague, but aching
sense of loneliness which was daily growing upon him returned with
greater vigor.

He leaned back in the coupe and gloomily reflected.

He had been married scarcely a year, yet even in the illusions of
the honeymoon the woman, older than himself, and the widow of his
old patron, had half unconsciously reasserted herself, and slipped
back into the domination of her old position.  It was at first
pleasant enough,--this half-maternal protectorate which is apt to
mingle even with the affections of younger women,--and Clarence, in
his easy, half-feminine intuition of the sex, yielded, as the strong
are apt to yield, through the very consciousness of their own
superiority.  But this is a quality the weaker are not apt to
recognize, and the woman who has once tasted equal power with her
husband not only does not easily relegate it, but even makes its
continuance a test of the affections.  The usual triumphant feminine
conclusion, "Then you no longer love me," had in Clarence’s brief
experience gone even further and reached its inscrutable climax,
"Then I no longer love you," although shown only in a momentary
hardening of the eye and voice.  And added to this was his sudden,
but confused remembrance that he had seen that eye and heard that
voice in marital altercation during Judge Peyton’s life, and that he
himself, her boy partisan, had sympathized with her.  Yet, strange
to say, this had given him more pain than her occasional other
reversions to the past--to her old suspicious of him when he was a
youthful protege of her husband and a presumed suitor of her adopted
daughter Susy.  High natures are more apt to forgive wrong done to
themselves than any abstract injustice.  And her capricious tyranny
over her dependents and servants, or an unreasoning enmity to a
neighbor or friend, outraged his finer sense more than her own
misconception of himself.  Nor did he dream that this was a thing
most women seldom understand, or, understanding, ever forgive.

The coupe rattled over the stones or swirled through the muddy
pools of the main thoroughfares.  Newspaper and telegraphic offices
were still brilliantly lit, and crowds were gathered among the
bulletin boards.  He knew that news had arrived from Washington
that evening of the first active outbreaks of secession, and that
the city was breathless with excitement.  Had he not just come from
the theatre, where certain insignificant allusions in the play had
been suddenly caught up and cheered or hissed by hitherto unknown
partisans, to the dumb astonishment of a majority of the audience
comfortably settled to money-getting and their own affairs alone?
Had he not applauded, albeit half-scornfully, the pretty actress--
his old playmate Susy--who had audaciously and all incongruously
waved the American flag in their faces?  Yes! he had known it; had
lived for the last few weeks in an atmosphere electrically
surcharged with it--and yet it had chiefly affected him in his
personal homelessness.  For his wife was a Southerner, a born
slaveholder, and a secessionist, whose noted prejudices to the
North had even outrun her late husband's politics.  At first the
piquancy and recklessness of her opinionative speech amused him as
part of her characteristic flavor, or as a lingering youthfulness
which the maturer intellect always pardons.  He had never taken her
politics seriously--why should he?  With her head on his shoulder
he had listened to her extravagant diatribes against the North.  He
had forgiven her outrageous indictment of his caste and his
associates for the sake of the imperious but handsome lips that
uttered it.  But when he was compelled to listen to her words
echoed and repeated by her friends and family; when he found that
with the clannishness of her race she had drawn closer to them in
this controversy,--that she depended upon them for her intelligence
and information rather than upon him,--he had awakened to the
reality of his situation.  He had borne the allusions of her
brother, whose old scorn for his dependent childhood had been
embittered by his sister's marriage and was now scarcely concealed.
Yet, while he had never altered his own political faith and social
creed in this antagonistic atmosphere, he had often wondered, with
his old conscientiousness and characteristic self-abnegation,
whether his own political convictions were not merely a revulsion
from his domestic tyranny and alien surroundings.

In the midst of this gloomy retrospect the coupe stopped with a
jerk before his own house.  The door was quickly opened by a
servant, who appeared to be awaiting him.

"Some one to see you in the library, sir," said the man, "and"--
He hesitated and looked towards the coupe.

"Well?" said Clarence impatiently.

"He said, sir, as how you were not to send away the carriage."

"Indeed, and who is it?" demanded Clarence sharply.

"Mr. Hooker.  He said I was to say Jim Hooker."

The momentary annoyance in Clarence's face changed to a look of
reflective curiosity.

"He said he knew you were at the theatre, and he would wait until
you came home," continued the man, dubiously watching his master's
face.  "He don't know you've come in, sir, and--and I can easily
get rid of him."

"No matter now.  I'll see him, and," added Clarence, with a faint
smile, "let the carriage wait."

Yet, as he turned towards the library he was by no means certain
that an interview with the old associate of his boyhood under Judge
Peyton's guardianship would divert his mind.  Yet he let no trace
of his doubts nor of his past gloom show in his face as he entered
the room.

Mr. Hooker was apparently examining the elegant furniture and
luxurious accommodation with his usual resentful enviousness.
Clarence had got a "soft thing."  That it was more or less the
result of his "artfulness," and that he was unduly "puffed up" by
it, was, in Hooker's characteristic reasoning, equally clear.  As
his host smilingly advanced with outstretched hand, Mr. Hooker's
efforts to assume a proper abstraction of manner and contemptuous
indifference to Clarence's surroundings which should wound his
vanity ended in his lolling back at full length in the chair with
his eyes on the ceiling.  But, remembering suddenly that he was
really the bearer of a message to Clarence, it struck him that his
supine position was, from a theatrical view-point, infelicitous.
In his experiences of the stage he had never delivered a message in
that way.  He rose awkwardly to his feet.

"It was so good of you to wait," said Clarence courteously.

"Saw you in the theatre," said Hooker brusquely.  "Third row in
parquet.  Susy said it was you, and had suthin' to say to you.
Suthin' you ought to know," he continued, with a slight return of
his old mystery of manner which Clarence so well remembered.  "You
saw HER--she fetched the house with that flag business, eh?  She
knows which way the cat is going to jump, you bet.  I tell you, for
all the blowing of these secessionists, the Union's goin' to pay!
Yes, sir!"  He stopped, glanced round the handsome room, and added
darkly, "Mebbee better than this."

With the memory of Hooker's characteristic fondness for mystery
still in his mind, Clarence overlooked the innuendo, and said
smilingly,--

"Why didn't you bring Mrs. Hooker here?  I should have been honored
with her company."

Mr. Hooker frowned slightly at this seeming levity.

"Never goes out after a performance.  Nervous exhaustion.  Left her
at our rooms in Market Street.  We can drive there in ten minutes.
That's why I asked to have the carriage wait."

Clarence hesitated.  Without caring in the least to renew the
acquaintance of his old playmate and sweetheart, a meeting that
night in some vague way suggested to him a providential diversion.
Nor was he deceived by any gravity in the message.  With his
remembrance of Susy's theatrical tendencies, he was quite prepared
for any capricious futile extravagance.

"You are sure we will not disturb her?" he said politely.

"No."

Clarence led the way to the carriage.  If Mr. Hooker expected him
during the journey to try to divine the purport of Susy's message
he was disappointed.  His companion did not allude to it.  Possibly
looking upon it as a combined theatrical performance, Clarence
preferred to wait for Susy as the better actor.  The carriage
rolled rapidly through the now deserted streets, and at last, under
the directions of Mr. Hooker, who was leaning half out of the
window, it drew up at a middle-class restaurant, above whose still
lit and steaming windows were some ostentatiously public apartments,
accessible from a side entrance.  As they ascended the staircase
together, it became evident that Mr. Hooker was scarcely more at his
ease in the character of host than he had been as guest.  He stared
gloomily at a descending visitor, grunted audibly at a waiter in the
passage, and stopped before a door, where a recently deposited tray
displayed the half-eaten carcase of a fowl, an empty champagne
bottle, two half-filled glasses, and a faded bouquet.  The whole
passage was redolent with a singular blending of damp cooking, stale
cigarette smoke, and patchouli.

Putting the tray aside with his foot, Mr. Hooker opened the door
hesitatingly and peered into the room, muttered a few indistinct
words, which were followed by a rapid rustling of skirts, and then,
with his hand still on the door-knob, turning to Clarence, who had
discreetly halted on the threshold, flung the door open theatrically
and bade him enter.

"She is somewhere in the suite," he added, with a large wave of the
hand towards a door that was still oscillating.  "Be here in a
minit."

Clarence took in the apartment with a quiet glance.  Its furniture
had the frayed and discolored splendors of a public parlor which
had been privately used and maltreated; there were stains in the
large medallioned carpet; the gilded veneer had been chipped from a
heavy centre table, showing the rough, white deal beneath, which
gave it the appearance of a stage "property;" the walls, paneled
with gilt-framed mirrors, reflected every domestic detail or
private relaxation with shameless publicity.  A damp waterproof,
shawl, and open newspaper were lying across the once brilliant
sofa; a powder-puff, a plate of fruit, and a play-book were on the
centre table, and on the marble-topped sideboard was Mr. Hooker's
second-best hat, with a soiled collar, evidently but lately
exchanged for the one he had on, peeping over its brim.  The whole
apartment seemed to mingle the furtive disclosures of the dressing-
room with the open ostentations of the stage, with even a slight
suggestion of the auditorium in a few scattered programmes on the
floor and chairs.

The inner door opened again with a slight theatrical start, and
Susy, in an elaborate dressing-gown, moved languidly into the room.
She apparently had not had time to change her underskirt, for there
was the dust of the stage on its delicate lace edging, as she threw
herself into an armchair and crossed her pretty slippered feet
before her.  Her face was pale, its pallor incautiously increased
by powder; and as Clarence looked at its still youthful, charming
outline, he was not perhaps sorry that the exquisite pink and white
skin beneath, which he had once kissed, was hidden from that
awakened recollection.  Yet there was little trace of the girlish
Susy in the pretty, but prematurely jaded, actress before him, and
he felt momentarily relieved.  It was her youth and freshness
appealing to his own youth and imagination that he had loved--not
HER.  Yet as she greeted him with a slight exaggeration of glance,
voice, and manner, he remembered that even as a girl she was an
actress.

Nothing of this, however, was in his voice and manner as he gently
thanked her for the opportunity of meeting her again.  And he was
frank, for the diversion he had expected he had found; he even was
conscious of thinking more kindly of his wife who had supplanted
her.

"I told Jim he must fetch you if he had to carry you," she said,
striking the palm of her hand with her fan, and glancing at her
husband.  "I reckon he guessed WHY, though I didn't tell him--I
don't tell Jim EVERYTHING."

Here Jim rose, and looking at his watch, "guessed he'd run over to
the Lick House and get some cigars."  If he was acting upon some
hint from his wife, his simulation was so badly done that Clarence
felt his first sense of uneasiness.  But as Hooker closed the door
awkwardly and unostentatiously behind him, Clarence smilingly said
he had waited to hear the message from her own lips.

"Jim only knows what he's heard outside: the talk of men, you
know,--and he hears a good deal of that--more, perhaps, than YOU
do.  It was that which put me up to finding out the truth.  And I
didn't rest till I did.  I'm not to be fooled, Clarence,--you don't
mind my calling you Clarence now we're both married and done for,--
and I'm not the kind to be fooled by anybody from the Cow counties--
and that's the Robles Ranche.  I'm a Southern woman myself from
Missouri, but I'm for the Union first, last, and all the time, and
I call myself a match for any lazy, dawdling, lash-swinging
slaveholder and slaveholderess--whether they're mixed blood, Heaven
only knows, or what--or their friends or relations, or the dirty
half-Spanish grandees and their mixed half-nigger peons who truckle
to them.  You bet!"

His blood had stirred quickly at the mention of the Robles Ranche,
but the rest of Susy's speech was too much in the vein of her old
extravagance to touch him seriously.  He found himself only
considering how strange it was that the old petulance and
impulsiveness of her girlhood were actually bringing back with them
her pink cheeks and brilliant eyes.

"You surely didn't ask Jim to bring me here," he said smilingly,
"to tell me that Mrs. Peyton"--he corrected himself hastily as a
malicious sparkle came into Susy's blue eyes--"that my wife was a
Southern woman, and probably sympathized with her class?  Well, I
don't know that I should blame her for that any more than she
should blame me for being a Northern man and a Unionist."

"And she doesn't blame you?" asked Susy sneeringly.

The color came slightly to Clarence's cheek, but before he could
reply the actress added,--

"No, she prefers to use you!"

"I don't think I understand you," said Clarence, rising coldly.

"No, you don't understand HER!" retorted Susy sharply.  "Look here,
Clarence Brant, you're right; I didn't ask you here to tell you--
what you and everybody knows--that your wife is a Southerner.  I
didn't ask you here to tell you what everybody suspects--that she
turns you round her little finger.  But I did ask you here to tell
you what nobody, not even you, suspects--but what I know!--and that
is that she's a TRAITOR--and more, a SPY!--and that I've only got
to say the word, or send that man Jim to say the word, to have her
dragged out of her Copperhead den at Robles Ranche and shut up in
Fort Alcatraz this very night!"

Still with the pink glowing in her rounding cheek, and eyes snapping
like splintered sapphires, she rose to her feet, with her pretty
shoulders lifted, her small hands and white teeth both tightly
clenched, and took a step towards him.  Even in her attitude there
was a reminiscence of her willful childhood, although still blended
with the provincial actress whom he had seen on the stage only an
hour ago.  Thoroughly alarmed at her threat, in his efforts to
conceal his feelings he was not above a weak retaliation.  Stepping
back, he affected to regard her with a critical admiration that was
only half simulated, and said with a smile,--

"Very well done--but you have forgotten the flag."

She did not flinch.  Rather accepting the sarcasm as a tribute to
her art, she went on with increasing exaggeration: "No, it is YOU
who have forgotten the flag--forgotten your country, your people,
your manhood--everything for that high-toned, double-dyed old spy
and traitress!  For while you are standing here, your wife is
gathering under her roof at Robles a gang of spies and traitors like
herself--secession leaders and their bloated, drunken 'chivalry'!
Yes, you may smile your superior smile, but I tell you, Clarence
Brant, that with all your smartness and book learning you know no
more of what goes on around you than a child.  But others do!  This
conspiracy is known to the government, the Federal officers have
been warned; General Sumner has been sent out here-- and his first
act was to change the command at Fort Alcatraz, and send your wife's
Southern friend--Captain Pinckney--to the right about!  Yes--
everything is known but ONE thing, and that is WHERE and HOW this
precious crew meet!  That I alone know, and that I've told you!"

"And I suppose," said Clarence, with an unchanged smile, "that this
valuable information came from your husband--my old friend, Jim
Hooker?"

"No," she answered sharply, "it comes from Cencho--one of your own
peons--who is more true to you and the old Rancho than YOU have
ever been.  He saw what was going on, and came to me, to warn you!"

"But why not to me directly?" asked Clarence, with affected
incredulity.

"Ask him!" she said viciously.  "Perhaps he didn't want to warn the
master against the mistress.  Perhaps he thought WE are still
friends.  Perhaps"--she hesitated with a lower voice and a forced
smile--"perhaps he used to see us together in the old times."

"Very likely," said Clarence quietly.  "And for the sake of those
old times, Susy," he went on, with a singular gentleness that was
quite distinct from his paling face and set eyes, "I am going to
forget all that you have just said of me and mine, in all the old
willfulness and impatience that I see you still keep--with all your
old prettiness."  He took his hat from the table and gravely held
out his hand.

She was frightened for a moment with his impassive abstraction.  In
the old days she had known it--had believed it was his dogged
"obstinacy"--but she knew the hopelessness of opposing it.  Yet
with feminine persistency she again threw herself against it, as
against a wall.

"You don't believe me!  Well, go and see for yourself.  They are at
Robles NOW.  If you catch the early morning stage at Santa Clara
you will come upon them before they disperse.  Dare you try it?"

"Whatever I do," he returned smilingly, "I shall always be grateful
to you for giving me this opportunity of seeing you again AS YOU
WERE.  Make my excuses to your husband.  Good-night."

"Clarence!"

But he had already closed the door behind him.  His face did not
relax its expression nor change as he looked again at the tray with
its broken viands before the door, the worn, stained hall carpet, or
the waiter who shuffled past him.  He was apparently as critically
conscious of them and of the close odors of the hall, and the
atmosphere of listless decay and faded extravagance around him, as
before the interview.  But if the woman he had just parted from had
watched him she would have supposed he still utterly disbelieved her
story.  Yet he was conscious that all that he saw was a part of his
degradation, for he had believed every word she had uttered.
Through all her extravagance, envy, and revengefulness he saw the
central truth--that he had been deceived--not by his wife, but by
himself!  He had suspected all this before.  This was what had been
really troubling him--this was what he had put aside, rather than
his faith, not in her, but in his ideal.  He remembered letters that
had passed between her and Captain Pinckney--letters that she had
openly sent to notorious Southern leaders; her nervous anxiety to
remain at the Rancho; the innuendoes and significant glances of
friends which he had put aside--as he had this woman's message!
Susy had told him nothing new of his wife--but the truth of HIMSELF!
And the revelation came from people who he was conscious were the
inferiors of himself and his wife.  To an independent, proud, and
self-made man it was the culminating stroke.

In the same abstracted voice he told the coachman to drive home.
The return seemed interminable--though he never shifted his
position.  Yet when he drew up at his own door and looked at his
watch he found he had been absent only half an hour.  Only half an
hour!  As he entered the house he turned with the same abstraction
towards a mirror in the hall, as if he expected to see some outward
and visible change in himself in that time.  Dismissing his servants
to bed, he went into his dressing-room, completely changed his
attire, put on a pair of long riding-boots, and throwing a serape
over his shoulders, paused a moment, took a pair of small "Derringer"
pistols from a box, put them in his pockets, and then slipped
cautiously down the staircase.  A lack of confidence in his own
domestics had invaded him for the first time.  The lights were out.
He silently opened the door and was in the street.

He walked hastily a few squares to a livery stable whose proprietor
he knew.  His first inquiry was for one "Redskin," a particular
horse; the second for its proprietor.  Happily both were in.  The
proprietor asked no question of a customer of Clarence's condition.
The horse, half Spanish, powerful and irascible, was quickly
saddled.  As Clarence mounted, the man in an impulse of sociability
said,--

"Saw you at the theatre to-night, sir."

"Ah," returned Clarence, quietly gathering up the reins.

"Rather a smart trick of that woman with the flag," he went on
tentatively.  Then, with a possible doubt of his customer's
politics, he added with a forced smile, "I reckon it's all party
fuss, though; there ain't any real danger."

But fast as Clarence might ride the words lingered in his ears.  He
saw through the man's hesitation; he, too, had probably heard that
Clarence Brant weakly sympathized with his wife's sentiments, and
dared not speak fully.  And he understood the cowardly suggestion
that there was "no real danger."  It had been Clarence's one
fallacy.  He had believed the public excitement was only a
temporary outbreak of partisan feeling, soon to subside.  Even now
he was conscious that he was less doubtful of the integrity of the
Union than of his own household.  It was not the devotion of the
patriot, but the indignation of an outraged husband, that was
spurring him on.

He knew that if he reached Woodville by five o'clock he could get
ferried across the bay at the Embarcadero, and catch the down coach
to Fair Plains, whence he could ride to the Rancho.  As the coach
did not connect directly with San Francisco, the chance of his
surprising them was greater.  Once clear of the city outskirts, he
bullied Redskin into irascible speed, and plunged into the rainy
darkness of the highroad.  The way was familiar.  For a while he
was content to feel the buffeting, caused by his rapid pace, of
wind and rain against his depressed head and shoulders in a sheer
brutal sense of opposition and power, or to relieve his pent-up
excitement by dashing through overflowed gullies in the road or
across the quaggy, sodden edges of meadowland, until he had
controlled Redskin's rebellious extravagance into a long steady
stride.  Then he raised his head and straightened himself on the
saddle, to think.  But to no purpose.  He had no plan; everything
would depend upon the situation; the thought of forestalling any
action of the conspirators, by warning or calling in the aid of the
authorities, for an instant crossed his mind, but was as instantly
dismissed.  He had but an instinct--to see with his own eyes what
his reason told him was true.  Day was breaking through drifting
scud and pewter-colored clouds as he reached Woodville ferry,
checkered with splashes of the soil and the spume of his horse,
from whose neck and flanks the sweat rolled like lather.  Yet he
was not conscious how intent had been his purpose until he felt a
sudden instinctive shock on seeing that the ferryboat was gone.
For an instant his wonderful self-possession abandoned him; he
could only gaze vacantly at the leaden-colored bay, without a
thought or expedient.  But in another moment he saw that the boat
was returning from the distance.  Had he lost his only chance?  He
glanced hurriedly at his watch; he had come more quickly than he
imagined; there would still be time.  He beckoned impatiently to
the ferryman; the boat--a ship's pinnace, with two men in it--crept
in with exasperating slowness.  At last the two rowers suddenly
leaped ashore.

"Ye might have come before, with the other passenger.  We don't
reckon to run lightnin' trips on this ferry."

But Clarence was himself again.  "Twenty dollars for two more oars
in that boat," he said quietly, "and fifty if you get me over in
time to catch the down stage."

The man glanced at Clarence's eyes.  "Run up and rouse out Jake and
Sam," he said to the other boatman; then more leisurely, gazing at
his customer's travel-stained equipment, he said, "There must have
been a heap o' passengers got left by last night's boat.  You're
the second man that took this route in a hurry."

At any other time the coincidence might have struck Clarence.  But
he only answered curtly, "Unless we are under way in ten minutes
you will find I am NOT the second man, and that our bargain's off."

But here two men emerged from the shanty beside the ferryhouse, and
tumbled sleepily into the boat.  Clarence seized an extra pair of
sculls that were standing against the shed, and threw them into the
stern.  "I don't mind taking a hand myself for exercise," he said
quietly.

The ferryman glanced again at Clarence's travel-worn figure and
determined eyes with mingled approval and surprise.  He lingered a
moment with his oars lifted, looking at his passenger.  "It ain't
no business o' mine, young man," he said deliberately, "but I
reckon you understand me when I say that I've just taken another
man over there."

"I do," said Clarence impatiently.

"And you still want to go?"

"Certainly," replied Clarence, with a cold stare, taking up his
oars.

The man shrugged his shoulders, bent himself for the stroke, and
the boat sprung forward.  The others rowed strongly and rapidly,
the tough ashen blades springing like steel from the water, the
heavy boat seeming to leap in successive bounds until they were
fairly beyond the curving inshore current and clearing the placid,
misty surface of the bay.  Clarence did not speak, but bent
abstractedly over his oar; the ferryman and his crew rowed in equal
panting silence; a few startled ducks whirred before them, but
dropped again to rest.  In half an hour they were at the
Embarcadero.  The time was fairly up.  Clarence's eyes were eagerly
bent for the first appearance of the stage-coach around the little
promontory; the ferryman was as eagerly scanning the bare, empty
street of the still sleeping settlement.

"I don't see him anywhere," said the ferryman with a glance, half
of astonishment and half of curiosity, at his solitary passenger.

"See whom?" asked Clarence carelessly, as he handed the man his
promised fee.

"The other man I ferried over to catch the stage.  He must have
gone on without waiting.  You're in luck, young fellow!"

"I don't understand you," said Clarence impatiently.  "What has
your previous passenger to do with me?"

"Well, I reckon you know best.  He's the kind of man, gin'rally
speaking, that other men, in a pow'ful hurry, don't care to meet--
and, az a rule, don't FOLLER arter.  It's gin'rally the other way."

"What do you mean?" inquired Clarence sternly.  "Of whom are you
speaking?"

"The Chief of Police of San Francisco!"



CHAPTER II.


The laugh that instinctively broke from Clarence's lips was so
sincere and unaffected that the man was disconcerted, and at last
joined in it, a little shamefacedly.  The grotesque blunder of
being taken as a fugitive from justice relieved Clarence's mind
from its acute tension,--he was momentarily diverted,--and it was
not until the boatman had departed, and he was again alone, that it
seemed to have any collateral significance.  Then an uneasy
recollection of Susy's threat that she had the power to put his
wife in Fort Alcatraz came across him.  Could she have already
warned the municipal authorities and this man?  But he quickly
remembered that any action from such a warning could only have been
taken by the United States Marshal, and not by a civic official,
and dismissed the idea.

Nevertheless, when the stage with its half-spent lamps still
burning dimly against the morning light swept round the curve and
rolled heavily up to the rude shanty which served as coach-office,
he became watchful.  A single yawning individual in its doorway
received a few letters and parcels, but Clarence was evidently the
ONLY waiting passenger.  Any hope that he might have entertained
that his mysterious predecessor would emerge from some seclusion at
that moment was disappointed.  As he entered the coach he made a
rapid survey of his fellow-travelers, but satisfied himself that
the stranger was not among them.  They were mainly small traders or
farmers, a miner or two, and apparently a Spanish-American of
better degree and personality.  Possibly the circumstance that men
of this class usually preferred to travel on horseback and were
rarely seen in public conveyances attracted his attention, and
their eyes met more than once in mutual curiosity.  Presently
Clarence addressed a remark to the stranger in Spanish; he replied
fluently and courteously, but at the next stopping-place he asked a
question of the expressman in an unmistakable Missouri accent.
Clarence's curiosity was satisfied; he was evidently one of those
early American settlers who had been so long domiciled in Southern
California as to adopt the speech as well as the habiliments of the
Spaniard.

The conversation fell upon the political news of the previous
night, or rather seemed to be lazily continued from some previous,
more excited discussion, in which one of the contestants--a red-
bearded miner--had subsided into an occasional growl of surly
dissent.  It struck Clarence that the Missourian had been an amused
auditor and even, judging from a twinkle in his eye, a mischievous
instigator of the controversy.  He was not surprised, therefore,
when the man turned to him with a certain courtesy and said,--

"And what, sir, is the political feeling in YOUR district?"

But Clarence was in no mood to be drawn out, and replied, almost
curtly, that as he had come only from San Francisco, they were
probably as well informed on that subject as himself.  A quick and
searching glance from the stranger's eye made him regret his
answer, but in the silence that ensued the red-bearded miner,
evidently still rankling at heart, saw his opportunity.  Slapping
his huge hands on his knees, and leaning far forward until he
seemed to plunge his flaming beard, like a firebrand, into the
controversy, he said grimly,--

"Well, I kin tell you, gen'l'men, THIS.  It ain't goin' to be no
matter wot's the POLITICAL FEELING here or thar--it ain't goin' to
be no matter wot's the State's rights and wot's Fed'ral rights--it
ain't goin' to be no question whether the gov'ment's got the right
to relieve its own soldiers that those Secesh is besieging in Fort
Sumter or whether they haven't--but the first gun that's fired at
the flag blows the chains off every d--n nigger south of Mason and
Dixon's line!  You hear me!  I'm shoutin'!  And whether you call
yourselves 'Secesh' or 'Union' or 'Copperhead' or 'Peace men,'
you've got to face it!"

There was an angry start in one or two of the seats; one man caught
at the swinging side-strap and half rose, a husky voice began,
"It's a d----d"--and then all as suddenly subsided.  Every eye was
turned to an insignificant figure in the back seat.  It was a
woman, holding a child on her lap, and gazing out of the window
with her sex's profound unconcern in politics.  Clarence understood
the rude chivalry of the road well enough to comprehend that this
unconscious but omnipotent figure had more than once that day
controlled the passions of the disputants.  They dropped back
weakly to their seats, and their mutterings rolled off in the
rattle of the wheels.  Clarence glanced at the Missourian; he was
regarding the red-bearded miner with a singular curiosity.

The rain had ceased, but the afternoon shadows were deepening when
they at last reached Fair Plains, where Clarence expected to take
horse to the Rancho.  He was astonished, however, to learn that all
the horses in the stable were engaged, but remembering that some of
his own stock were in pasturage with a tenant at Fair Plains, and
that he should probably have a better selection, he turned his
steps thither.  Passing out of the stable-yard he recognized the
Missourian's voice in whispered conversation with the proprietor,
but the two men withdrew into the shadow as he approached.  An ill-
defined uneasiness came over him; he knew the proprietor, who also
seemed to know the Missourian, and this evident avoidance of him
was significant.  Perhaps his reputation as a doubtful Unionist had
preceded him, but this would not account for their conduct in a
district so strongly Southern in sympathy as Fair Plains.  More
impressed by the occurrence than he cared to admit, when at last,
after some delay, he had secured his horse, and was once more in
the saddle, he kept a sharp lookout for his quondam companion.  But
here another circumstance added to his suspicions: there was a main
road leading to Santa Inez, the next town, and the Rancho, and this
Clarence had purposely taken in order to watch the Missourian; but
there was also a cutoff directly to the Rancho, known only to the
habitues of the Rancho.  After a few moments' rapid riding on a
mustang much superior to any in the hotel stables, he was satisfied
that the stranger must have taken the cut-off.  Putting spurs to
his horse he trusted still to precede him to the Rancho--if that
were his destination.

As he dashed along the familiar road, by a strange perversity of
fancy, instead of thinking of his purpose, he found himself
recalling the first time he had ridden that way in the flush of his
youth and hopefulness.  The girl-sweetheart he was then going to
rejoin was now the wife of another; the woman who had been her
guardian was now his own wife.  He had accepted without a pang the
young girl's dereliction, but it was through her revelation that he
was now about to confront the dereliction of his own wife.  And
this was the reward of his youthful trust and loyalty!  A bitter
laugh broke from his lips.  It was part of his still youthful self-
delusion that he believed himself wiser and stronger for it.

It was quite dark when he reached the upper field or first terrace
of the Rancho.  He could see the white walls of the casa rising
dimly out of the green sea of early wild grasses, like a phantom
island.  It was here that the cut-off joined the main road--now the
only one that led to the casa.  He was satisfied that no one could
have preceded him from Fair Plains; but it was true that he must
take precautions against his own discovery.  Dismounting near a
clump of willows, he unsaddled and unbridled his horse, and with a
cut of the riata over its haunches sent it flying across the field
in the direction of a band of feeding mustangs, which it presently
joined.  Then, keeping well in the shadow of a belt of shrub-oaks,
he skirted the long lesser terraces of the casa, intending to
approach the house by way of the old garden and corral.  A drizzling
rain, occasionally driven by the wind into long, misty, curtain-like
waves, obscured the prospect and favored his design. He reached the
low adobe wall of the corral in safety; looking over he could
detect, in spite of the darkness, that a number of the horses were
of alien brands, and even recognized one or two from the Santa Inez
district.  The vague outline of buggies and carryalls filled the
long shed beside the stables.  There WAS company at the casa--so far
Susy was right!

Nevertheless, lingering still by the wall of the old garden for the
deepening of night, his nervous feverishness was again invaded and
benumbed by sullen memories.  There was the opening left by the old
grille in the wall, behind which Mrs. Peyton stood on the morning
when he thought he was leaving the ranch forever; where he had
first clasped her in his arms, and stayed.  A turn of the head, a
moment's indecision, a single glance of a languorous eye, had
brought this culmination.  And now he stood again before that
ruined grille, his house and lands, even his NAME, misused by a
mad, scheming enthusiast, and himself a creeping spy of his own
dishonor!  He turned with a bitter smile again to the garden.  A
few dark red Castilian roses still leaned forward and swayed in the
wind with dripping leaves.  It was here that the first morning of
his arrival he had kissed Susy; the perfume and color of her pink
skin came back to him with a sudden shock as he stood there; he
caught at a flower, drew it towards him, inhaled its odor in a long
breath that left him faint and leaning against the wall.  Then
again he smiled, but this time more wickedly--in what he believed
his cynicism had sprung up the first instinct of revenge!

It was now dark enough for him to venture across the carriage road
and make his way to the rear of the house.  His first characteristic
instinct had been to enter openly at his own front gate, but the
terrible temptation to overhear and watch the conspiracy unobserved--
that fascination common to deceived humanity to witness its own
shame--had now grown upon him.  He knew that a word or gesture of
explanation, apology, appeal, or even terror from his wife would
check his rage and weaken his purpose.  His perfect knowledge of the
house and the security of its inmates would enable him from some
obscure landing or gallery to participate in any secret conclave
they might hold in the patio--the only place suitable for so
numerous a rendezvous.  The absence of light in the few external
windows pointed to this central gathering.  And he had already
conceived his plan of entrance.

Gaining the rear wall of the casa he began cautiously to skirt its
brambly base until he had reached a long, oven-like window half
obliterated by a monstrous passion vine.  It was the window of what
had once been Mrs. Peyton's boudoir; the window by which he had
once forced an entrance to the house when it was in the hands of
squatters, the window from which Susy had signaled her Spanish
lover, the window whose grating had broken the neck of Judge
Peyton's presumed assassin.  But these recollections no longer
delayed him; the moment for action had arrived.  He knew that since
the tragedy the boudoir had been dismantled and shunned; the
servants believed it to be haunted by the assassin's ghost.  With
the aid of the passion vine the ingress was easy; the interior
window was open; the rustle of dead leaves on the bare floor as he
entered, and the whir of a frightened bird by his ear, told the
story of its desolation and the source of the strange noises that
had been heard there.  The door leading to the corridor was lightly
bolted, merely to keep it from rattling in the wind.  Slipping the
bolt with the blade of his pocket-knife he peered into the dark
passage.  The light streaming under a door to the left, and the
sound of voices, convinced him that his conjecture was right, and
the meeting was gathered on the broad balconies around the patio.
He knew that a narrow gallery, faced with Venetian blinds to
exclude the sun, looked down upon them.  He managed to gain it
without discovery; luckily the blinds were still down; between
their slats, himself invisible, he could hear and see everything
that occurred.

Yet even at this supreme moment the first thing that struck him was
the almost ludicrous contrast between the appearance of the meeting
and its tremendous object.  Whether he was influenced by any
previous boyish conception of a clouded and gloomy conspiracy he
did not know, but he was for an instant almost disconcerted by the
apparent levity and festivity of the conclave.  Decanters and
glasses stood on small tables before them; nearly all were drinking
and smoking.  They comprised fifteen or twenty men, some of whose
faces were familiar to him elsewhere as Southern politicians; a
few, he was shocked to see, were well-known Northern Democrats.
Occupying a characteristically central position was the famous
Colonel Starbottle, of Virginia.  Jaunty and youthful-looking in
his mask-like, beardless face, expansive and dignified in his
middle-aged port and carriage, he alone retained some of the
importance--albeit slightly theatrical and affected--of the
occasion.  Clarence in his first hurried glance had not observed
his wife, and for a moment had felt relieved; but as Colonel
Starbottle arose at that moment, and with a studiously chivalrous
and courtly manner turned to his right, he saw that she was sitting
at the further end of the balcony, and that a man whom he recognized
as Captain Pinckney was standing beside her.  The blood quickly
tightened around his heart, but left him cold and observant.

"It was seldom, indeed," remarked Colonel Starbottle, placing his
fat fingers in the frill of his shirt front, "that a movement like
this was graced with the actual presence of a lofty, inspiring, yet
delicate spirit--a Boadicea--indeed, he might say a Joan of Arc--in
the person of their charming hostess, Mrs. Brant.  Not only were
they favored by her social and hospitable ministration, but by her
active and enthusiastic cooperation in the glorious work they had
in hand.  It was through her correspondence and earnest advocacy
that they were to be favored to-night with the aid and counsel of
one of the most distinguished and powerful men in the Southern
district of California, Judge Beeswinger, of Los Angeles.  He had
not the honor of that gentleman's personal acquaintance; he
believed he was not far wrong in saying that this was also the
misfortune of every gentleman present; but the name itself was a
tower of strength.  He would go further, and say that Mrs. Brant
herself was personally unacquainted with him, but it was through
the fervor, poetry, grace, and genius of her correspondence with
that gentleman that they were to have the honor of his presence
that very evening.  It was understood that advices had been
received of his departure, and that he might be expected at Robles
at any moment."

"But what proof have we of Judge Beeswinger's soundness?" said a
lazy Southern voice at the conclusion of Colonel Starbottle's
periods.  "Nobody here seems to know him by sight: is it not risky
to admit a man to our meeting whom we are unable to identify?"

"I reckon nobody but a fool or some prying mudsill of a Yankee
would trust his skin here," returned another; "and if he did we'd
know what to do with him."

But Clarence's attention was riveted on his wife, and the
significant speech passed him as unheeded as had the colonel's
rhetoric.  She was looking very handsome and slightly flushed, with
a proud light in her eyes that he had never seen before.  Absorbed
in the discussion, she seemed to be paying little attention to
Captain Pinckney as she rose suddenly to her feet.

"Judge Beeswinger will be attended here by Mr. MacNiel, of the Fair
Plains Hotel, who will vouch for him and introduce him," she said
in a clear voice, which rang with an imperiousness that Clarence
well remembered.  "The judge was to arrive by the coach from
Martinez to Fair Plains, and is due now."

"Is there no GENTLEMAN to introduce him?  Must we take him on the
word of a common trader--by Jove! a whiskey-seller?" continued the
previous voice sneeringly.

"On the word of a lady, Mr. Brooks," said Captain Pinckney, with a
slight gesture towards Mrs. Brant--"who answers for both."

Clarence had started slightly at his wife's voice and the
information it conveyed.  His fellow-passenger, and the confidant
of MacNiel, was the man they were expecting!  If they had
recognized him, Clarence, would they not warn the company of his
proximity?  He held his breath as the sound of voices came from the
outer gate of the courtyard.  Mrs. Brant rose; at the same moment
the gate swung open, and a man entered.  It WAS the Missourian.

He turned with old-fashioned courtesy to the single woman standing
on the balcony.

"My fair correspondent, I believe!  I am Judge Beeswinger.  Your
agent, MacNiel, passed me through your guards at the gate, but I
did not deem it advisable to bring him into this assembly of
gentlemen without your further consideration.  I trust I was
right."

The quiet dignity and self-possession, the quaint, old-fashioned
colonial precision of speech, modified by a soft Virginian
intonation, and, above all, some singular individuality of the man
himself, produced a profound sensation, and seemed to suddenly give
the gathering an impressiveness it had lacked before.  For an
instant Clarence forgot himself and his personal wrongs in the
shock of indignation he felt at this potent addition to the ranks
of his enemies.  He saw his wife's eyes sparkle with pride over her
acquisition, and noticed that Pinckney cast a disturbed glance at
the newcomer.

The stranger ascended the few steps to the balcony and took Mrs.
Brant's hand with profound courtesy.  "Introduce me to my
colleagues--distinctly and separately.  It behooves a man at such a
moment to know to whom he entrusts his life and honor, and the life
and honor of his cause."

It was evidently no mere formal courtesy to the stranger.  As he
stepped forward along the balcony, and under Mrs. Brant's graceful
guidance was introduced to each of the members, he not only
listened with scrupulous care and attention to the name and
profession of each man, but bent upon him a clear, searching glance
that seemed to photograph him in his memory.  With two exceptions.
He passed Colonel Starbottle's expanding shirt frill with a bow of
elaborate precision, and said, "Colonel Starbottle's fame requires
neither introduction nor explanation."  He stopped before Captain
Pinckney and paused.

"An officer of the United States army, I believe, sir?"

"Yes."

"Educated at West Point, I think, by the government, to whom you
have taken the oath of allegiance?"

"Yes."

"Very good, sir," said the stranger, turning away.

"You have forgotten one other fact, sir," said Pinckney, with a
slightly supercilious air.

"Indeed!  What is it?"

"I am, first of all, a native of the State of South Carolina!"

A murmur of applause and approval ran round the balcony.  Captain
Pinckney smiled and exchanged glances with Mrs. Brant, but the
stranger quietly returned to the central table beside Colonel
Starbottle.  "I am not only an unexpected delegate to this august
assembly, gentlemen," he began gravely, "but I am the bearer of
perhaps equally unexpected news.  By my position in the Southern
district I am in possession of dispatches received only this
morning by pony express.  Fort Sumter has been besieged.  The
United States flag, carrying relief to the beleaguered garrison,
has been fired upon by the State of South Carolina."

A burst of almost hysteric applause and enthusiasm broke from the
assembly, and made the dim, vault-like passages and corridors of
the casa ring.  Cheer after cheer went up to the veiled gallery and
the misty sky beyond.  Men mounted on the tables and waved their
hands frantically, and in the midst of this bewildering turbulence
of sound and motion Clarence saw his wife mounted on a chair, with
burning cheeks and flashing eyes, waving her handkerchief like an
inspired priestess.  Only the stranger, still standing beside
Colonel Starbottle, remained unmoved and impassive.  Then, with an
imperative gesture, he demanded a sudden silence.

"Convincing and unanimous as this demonstration is, gentlemen," he
began quietly, "it is my duty, nevertheless, to ask you if you have
seriously considered the meaning of the news I have brought.  It is
my duty to tell you that it means civil war.  It means the clash of
arms between two sections of a mighty country; it means the
disruption of friends, the breaking of family ties, the separation
of fathers and sons, of brothers and sisters--even, perhaps, to the
disseverment of husband and wife!"

"It means the sovereignty of the South--and the breaking of a
covenant with lowborn traders and abolitionists," said Captain
Pinckney.

"If there are any gentlemen present," continued the stranger,
without heeding the interruption, "who have pledged this State to
the support of the South in this emergency, or to the establishment
of a Pacific republic in aid and sympathy with it, whose names are
on this paper"--he lifted a sheet of paper lying before Colonel
Starbottle--"but who now feel that the gravity of the news demands
a more serious consideration of the purpose, they are at liberty to
withdraw from the meeting, giving their honor, as Southern
gentlemen, to keep the secret intact."

"Not if I know it," interrupted a stalwart Kentuckian, as he rose
to his feet and strode down the steps to the patio.  "For," he
added, placing his back against the gateway, "I'll shoot the first
coward that backs out now."

A roar of laughter and approval followed, but was silenced again by
the quiet, unimpassioned voice of the stranger.  "If, on the other
hand," he went on calmly, "you all feel that this news is the
fitting culmination and consecration of the hopes, wishes, and
plans of this meeting, you will assert it again, over your own
signatures, to Colonel Starbottle at this table."

When the Kentuckian had risen, Clarence had started from his
concealment; when he now saw the eager figures pressing forward to
the table he hesitated no longer.  Slipping along the passage, he
reached the staircase which led to the corridor in the rear of the
balcony.  Descending this rapidly, he not only came upon the backs
of the excited crowd around the table, but even elbowed one of the
conspirators aside without being noticed.  His wife, who had risen
from her chair at the end of the balcony, was already moving
towards the table.  With a quick movement he seized her wrist, and
threw her back in the chair again.  A cry broke from her lips as
she recognized him, but still holding her wrist, he stepped quickly
between her and the astonished crowd.  There was a moment of
silence, then the cry of "Spy!" and "Seize him!" rose quickly, but
above all the voice and figure of the Missourian was heard
commanding them to stand back.  Turning to Clarence, he said
quietly,--

"I should know your face, sir.  Who are you?"

"The husband of this woman and the master of this house," said
Clarence as quietly, but in a voice he hardly recognized as his
own.

"Stand aside from her, then--unless you are hoping that her danger
may protect YOU!" said the Kentuckian, significantly drawing his
revolver.

But Mrs. Brant sprang suddenly to her feet beside Clarence.

"We are neither of us cowards, Mr. Brooks--though he speaks the
truth--and--more shame to me"--she added, with a look of savage
scorn at Clarence--"IS MY HUSBAND!"

"What is your purpose in coming here?" continued Judge Beeswinger,
with his eyes fixed on Clarence.

"I have given you all the information," said Clarence quietly,
"that is necessary to make you, as a gentleman, leave this house at
once--and that is my purpose.  It is all the information you will
get from me as long as you and your friends insult my roof with
your uninvited presence.  What I may have to say to you and each of
you hereafter--what I may choose to demand of you, according to
your own code of honor,"--he fixed his eyes on Captain Pinckney's,--
"is another question, and one not usually discussed before a lady."

"Pardon me.  A moment--a single moment."

It was the voice of Colonel Starbottle; it was the frilled shirt
front, the lightly buttoned blue coat with its expanding lapels,
like bursting petals, and the smiling mask of that gentleman rising
above the table and bowing to Clarence Brant and his wife with
infinite courtesy.  "The--er--humiliating situation in which we
find ourselves, gentlemen,--the reluctant witnesses of--er--what we
trust is only a temporary disagreement between our charming hostess
and the--er--gentleman whom she recognized under the highest title
to our consideration,--is distressing to us all, and would seem to
amply justify that gentleman's claims to a personal satisfaction,
which I know we would all delight to give.  But that situation
rests upon the supposition that our gathering here was of a purely
social or festive nature!  It may be," continued the colonel with a
blandly reflective air, "that the spectacle of these decanters and
glasses, and the nectar furnished us by our Hebe-like hostess" (he
lifted a glass of whiskey and water to his lips while he bowed to
Mrs. Brant gracefully), "has led the gentleman to such a deduction.
But when I suggest to him that our meeting was of a business, or
private nature, it strikes me that the question of intrusion may be
fairly divided between him and ourselves.  We may be even justified,
in view of that privacy, in asking him if his--er--entrance to
this house was--er--coincident with his appearance among us."

"With my front door in possession of strangers," said Clarence,
more in reply to a sudden contemptuous glance from his wife than
Starbottle's insinuation, "I entered the house through the window."

"Of my boudoir, where another intruder once broke his neck,"
interrupted his wife with a mocking laugh.

"Where I once helped this lady to regain possession of her house
when it was held by another party of illegal trespassers, who,
however, were content to call themselves 'jumpers,' and did not
claim the privacy of gentlemen."

"Do you mean to imply, sir," began Colonel Starbottle haughtily,
"that"--

"I mean to imply, sir," said Clarence with quiet scorn, "that I
have neither the wish to know nor the slightest concern in any
purpose that brought you here, and that when you quit the house you
take your secrets and your privacy with you intact, without let or
hindrance from me."

"Do you mean to say, Mr. Brant," said Judge Beeswinger, suppressing
the angry interruption of his fellows with a dominant wave of his
hand, as he fixed his eyes on Clarence keenly, "that you have no
sympathy with your wife's political sentiments?"

"I have already given you the information necessary to make you
quit this house, and that is all you have a right to know,"
returned Clarence with folded arms.

"But I can answer for him," said Mrs. Brant, rising, with a
quivering voice and curling lip.  "There IS no sympathy between us.
We are as far apart as the poles.  We have nothing in common but
this house and his name."

"But you are husband and wife, bound together by a sacred compact."

"A compact!" echoed Mrs. Brant, with a bitter laugh.  "Yes, the
compact that binds South Carolina to the nigger-worshipping
Massachusetts.  The compact that links together white and black,
the gentleman and the trader, the planter and the poor white--the
compact of those UNITED States.  Bah! THAT has been broken, and so
can this."

Clarence's face paled.  But before he could speak there was a rapid
clattering at the gate and a dismounted vaquero entered excitedly.
Turning to Mrs. Brant he said hurriedly, "Mother of God! the casa
is surrounded by a rabble of mounted men, and there is one among
them even now who demands admittance in the name of the Law."

"This is your work," said Brooks, facing Clarence furiously.  "You
have brought them with you, but, by God, they shall not save you!"
He would have clutched Clarence, but the powerful arm of Judge
Beeswinger intervened.  Nevertheless, he still struggled to reach
Clarence, appealing to the others: "Are you fools to stand there
and let him triumph!  Don't you see the cowardly Yankee trick he's
played upon us?"

"He has not," said Mrs. Brant haughtily.  "I have no reason to love
him or his friends; but I know he does not lie."

"Gentlemen!--gentlemen!" implored Colonel Starbottle with beaming
and unctuous persuasion, "may I--er--remark--that all this is far
from the question?  Are we to be alarmed because an unknown rabble,
no matter whence they come, demand entrance here in the name of the
Law?  I am not aware of any law of the State of California that we
are infringing.  By all means admit them."

The gate was thrown open.  A single thick-set man, apparently
unarmed and dressed like an ordinary traveler, followed by half a
dozen other equally unpretentious-looking men, entered.  The leader
turned to the balcony.

"I am the Chief of Police of San Francisco.  I have warrants for
the arrest of Colonel Culpepper Starbottle, Joshua Brooks, Captain
Pinckney, Clarence Brant and Alice his wife, and others charged
with inciting to riot and unlawful practice calculated to disturb
the peace of the State of California and its relations with the
Federal government," said the leader, in a dry official voice.

Clarence started.  In spite of its monotonous utterance it was the
voice of the red-bearded controversialist of the stage-coach.  But
where were his characteristic beard and hair?  Involuntarily
Clarence glanced at Judge Beeswinger; that gentleman was quietly
regarding the stranger with an impassive face that betrayed no
recognition whatever.

"But the city of San Francisco has no jurisdiction here," said
Colonel Starbottle, turning a bland smile towards his fellow-
members.  "I am--er--sorry to inform you that you are simply
trespassing, sir."

"I am here also as deputy sheriff," returned the stranger coolly.
"We were unable to locate the precise place of this meeting,
although we knew of its existence.  I was sworn in this morning at
Santa Inez by the judge of this district, and these gentlemen with
me are my posse."

There was a quick movement of resistance by the members, which was,
however, again waived blandly aside by Colonel Starbottle.  Leaning
forward in a slightly forensic attitude, with his fingers on the
table and a shirt frill that seemed to have become of itself
erectile, he said, with pained but polite precision, "I grieve to
have to state, sir, that even that position is utterly untenable
here.  I am a lawyer myself, as my friend here, Judge Beeswinger--
eh?  I beg your pardon!"

The officer of the law had momentarily started, with his eyes fixed
on Judge Beeswinger, who, however, seemed to be quietly writing at
the table.

"As Judge Beeswinger," continued Colonel Starbottle, "will probably
tell you and as a jurist himself, he will also probably agree with
me when I also inform you that, as the United States government is
an aggrieved party, it is a matter for the Federal courts to
prosecute, and that the only officer we can recognize is the United
States Marshal for the district.  When I add that the marshal,
Colonel Crackenthorpe, is one of my oldest friends, and an active
sympathizer with the South in the present struggle, you will
understand that any action from him in this matter is exceedingly
improbable."

The general murmur of laughter, relief, and approval was broken by
the quiet voice of Judge Beeswinger.

"Let me see your warrant, Mr. Deputy Sheriff."

The officer approached him with a slightly perplexed and constrained
air, and exhibited the paper.  Judge Beeswinger handed it back to
him.  "Colonel Starbottle is quite right in his contention," he said
quietly; "the only officer that this assembly can recognize is the
United States Marshal or his legal deputy.  But Colonel Starbottle is
wrong in his supposition that Colonel Crackenthorpe still retains
the functions of that office.  He was removed by the President of
the United States, and his successor was appointed and sworn in by
the Federal judge early this morning."  He paused, and folding up
the paper on which he had been writing, placed it in the hands of
the deputy.  "And this," he continued in the same even voice,
"constitutes you his deputy, and will enable you to carry out your
duty in coming here."

"What the devil does this mean, sir?  Who are you?" gasped Colonel
Starbottle, recoiling suddenly from the man at his side.

"I am the new United States Marshal for the Southern District of
California."



CHAPTER III.


Unsuspected and astounding as the revelation was to Clarence, its
strange reception by the conspirators seemed to him as astounding.
He had started forward, half expecting that the complacent and
self-confessed spy would be immolated by his infuriated dupes.  But
to his surprise the shock seemed to have changed their natures, and
given them the dignity they had lacked.  The excitability,
irritation, and recklessness which had previously characterized
them had disappeared.  The deputy and his posse, who had advanced
to the assistance of their revealed chief, met with no resistance.
They had evidently, as if with one accord, drawn away from Judge
Beeswinger, leaving a cleared space around him, and regarded their
captors with sullen contemptuous silence.  It was only broken by
Colonel Starbottle:--

"Your duty commands you, sir, to use all possible diligence in
bringing us before the Federal judge of this district--unless your
master in Washington has violated the Constitution so far as to
remove him, too!"

"I understand you perfectly," returned Judge Beeswinger, with
unchanged composure; "and as you know that Judge Wilson
unfortunately cannot be removed except through a regular course of
impeachment, I suppose you may still count upon his Southern
sympathies to befriend you.  With that I have nothing to do; my
duty is complete when my deputy has brought you before him and I
have stated the circumstances of the arrest."

"I congratulate you, sir," said Captain Pinckney, with an ironical
salute, "on your prompt reward for your treachery to the South, and
your equally prompt adoption of the peculiar tactics of your
friends in the way in which you have entered this house."

"I am sorry I cannot congratulate YOU, sir," returned Judge
Beeswinger gravely, on breaking your oath to the government which
has educated and supported you and given you the epaulettes you
disgrace.  Nor shall I discuss 'treachery' with the man who has not
only violated the trust of his country, but even the integrity of
his friend's household.  It is for that reason that I withhold the
action of this warrant in so far as it affects the persons of the
master and mistress of this home.  I am satisfied that Mr. Brant
has been as ignorant of what has been done here as I am that his
wife has been only the foolish dupe of a double traitor!"

"Silence!"

The words broke simultaneously from the lips of Clarence and
Captain Pinckney.  They stood staring at each other--the one pale,
the other crimson--as Mrs. Brant, apparently oblivious of the
significance of their united adjuration, turned to Judge Beeswinger
in the fury of her still stifled rage and mortification.

"Keep your mercy for your fellow-spy," she said, with a contemptuous
gesture towards her husband; "I go with these gentlemen!"

"You will not," said Clarence quietly, "until I have said a word to
you alone."  He laid his hand firmly upon her wrist.

The deputy and his prisoners filed slowly out of the courtyard
together, the latter courteously saluting Mrs. Brant as they
passed, but turning from Judge Beeswinger in contemptuous silence.
The judge followed them to the gate, but there he paused.  Turning
to Mrs. Brant, who was still half struggling in the strong grip of
her husband, he said,--

"Any compunction I may have had in misleading you by accepting your
invitation here I dismissed after I had entered this house.  And I
trust," he added, turning to Clarence sternly, "I leave you the
master of it!"

As the gate closed behind him, Clarence locked it.  When his wife
turned upon him angrily, he said quietly,--

"I have no intention of restraining your liberty a moment after our
interview is over, but until then I do not intend to be disturbed."

She threw herself disdainfully back in her chair, her hands clasped
in her lap in half-contemptuous resignation, with her eyes upon her
long slim arched feet crossed before her.  Even in her attitude
there was something of her old fascination which, however, now
seemed to sting Clarence to the quick.

"I have nothing to say to you in regard to what has just passed in
this house, except that as long as I remain even nominally its
master it shall not be repeated.  Although I shall no longer
attempt to influence or control your political sympathies, I shall
not allow you to indulge them where in any way they seem to imply
my sanction.  But so little do I oppose your liberty, that you are
free to rejoin your political companions whenever you choose to do
so on your own responsibility.  But I must first know from your own
lips whether your sympathies are purely political--or a name for
something else?"

She had alternately flushed and paled, although still keeping her
scornful attitude as he went on, but there was no mistaking the
genuineness of her vague wonderment at his concluding words.

"I don't understand you," she said, lifting her eyes to his in a
moment of cold curiosity.  "What do you mean?"

"What do I mean?  What did Judge Beeswinger mean when he called
Captain Pinckney a double traitor?" he said roughly.

She sprang to her feet with flashing eyes.  "And you--YOU! dare to
repeat the cowardly lie of a confessed spy.  This, then, is what
you wished to tell me--this the insult for which you have kept me
here; because you are incapable of understanding unselfish
patriotism or devotion--even to your own cause--you dare to judge
me by your own base, Yankee-trading standards.  Yes, it is worthy
of you!"  She walked rapidly up and down, and then suddenly faced
him.  "I understand it all; I appreciate your magnanimity now.  You
are willing I should join the company of these chivalrous gentlemen
in order to give color to your calumnies!  Say at once that it was
you who put up this spy to correspond with me--to come here--in
order to entrap me.  Yes entrap me--I--who a moment ago stood up
for you before these gentlemen, and said you could not lie.  Bah!"

Struck only by the wild extravagance of her speech and temper,
Clarence did not know that when women are most illogical they are
apt to be most sincere, and from a man's standpoint her unreasoning
deductions appeared to him only as an affectation to gain time for
thought, or a theatrical display, like Susy's.  And he was turning
half contemptuously away, when she again faced him with flashing
eyes.

"Well, hear me!  I accept; I leave here at once, to join my own
people, my own friends--those who understand me--put what
construction on it that you choose.  Do your worst; you cannot do
more to separate us than you have done just now."

She left him, and ran up the steps with a singular return of her
old occasional nymph-like nimbleness--the movement of a woman who
had never borne children--and a swish of her long skirts that he
remembered for many a day after, as she disappeared in the
corridor.  He remained looking after her--indignant, outraged, and
unconvinced.  There was a rattling at the gate.

He remembered he had locked it.  He opened it to the flushed pink
cheeks and dancing eyes of Susy.  The rain was still dripping from
her wet cloak as she swung it from her shoulders.

"I know it all!--all that's happened," she burst out with half-
girlish exuberance and half the actress's declamation.  "We met
them all in the road--posse and prisoners.  Chief Thompson knew me
and told me all.  And so you've done it--and you're master in your
old house again.  Clarence, old boy!  Jim said you wouldn't do it--
said you'd weaken on account of her!  But I said 'No.'  I knew you
better, old Clarence, and I saw it in your face, for all your
stiffness! ha!  But for all that I was mighty nervous and uneasy,
and I just made Jim send an excuse to the theatre and we rushed it
down here!  Lordy! but it looks natural to see the old house again!
And she--you packed her off with the others--didn't you?  Tell me,
Clarence," in her old appealing voice, "you shook her, too!"

Dazed and astounded, and yet experiencing a vague sense of relief
with something like his old tenderness towards the willful woman
before him, he had silently regarded her until her allusion to his
wife recalled him to himself.

"Hush!" he said quickly, with a glance towards the corridor.

"Ah!" said Susy, with a malicious smile, "then that's why Captain
Pinckney was lingering in the rear with the deputy."

"Silence!" repeated Clarence sternly.  "Go in there," pointing to
the garden room below the balcony, "and wait there with your
husband."

He half led, half pushed her into the room which had been his
business office, and returned to the patio.  A hesitating voice
from the balcony said, "Clarence!"

It was his wife's voice, but modified and gentler--more like her
voice as he had first heard it, or as if it had been chastened by
some reminiscence of those days.  It was his wife's face, too, that
looked down on his--paler than he had seen it since he entered the
house.  She was shawled and hooded, carrying a traveling-bag in her
hand.

"I am going, Clarence," she said, pausing before him, with gentle
gravity, "but not in anger.  I even ask you to forgive me for the
foolish words that I think your still more foolish accusation"--she
smiled faintly--"dragged from me.  I am going because I know that I
have brought--and that while I am here I shall always be bringing--
upon you the imputation and even the responsibility of my own
faith!  While I am proud to own it,--and if needs be suffer for
it,--I have no right to ruin your prospects, or even make you the
victim of the slurs that others may cast upon me.  Let us part as
friends--separated only by our different political faiths, but
keeping all other faiths together--until God shall settle the right
of this struggle.  Perhaps it may be soon--I sometimes think it may
be years of agony for all; but until then, good-by."

She had slowly descended the steps to the patio, looking handsomer
than he had ever seen her, and as if sustained and upheld by the
enthusiasm of her cause.  Her hand was outstretched towards his--
his heart beat violently--in another moment he might have forgotten
all and clasped her to his breast.  Suddenly she stopped, her
outstretched arm stiffened, her finger pointed to the chair on
which Susy's cloak was hanging.

"What's that?" she said in a sharp, high, metallic voice.  "Who is
here?  Speak!"

"Susy," said Clarence.

She cast a scathing glance round the patio, and then settled her
piercing eyes on Clarence with a bitter smile.

"Already!"

Clarence felt the blood rush to his face as he stammered, "She knew
what was happening here, and came to give you warning."

"Liar!"

"Stop!" said Clarence, with a white face.  "She came to tell me
that Captain Pinckney was still lingering for you in the road."

He threw open the gate to let her pass.  As she swept out she
lifted her hand.  As he closed the gate there were the white marks
of her four fingers on his cheek.



CHAPTER IV.


For once Susy had not exaggerated.  Captain Pinckney WAS lingering,
with the deputy who had charge of him, on the trail near the casa.
It had already been pretty well understood by both captives and
captors that the arrest was simply a legal demonstration; that the
sympathizing Federal judge would undoubtedly order the discharge of
the prisoners on their own recognizances, and it was probable that
the deputy saw no harm in granting Pinckney's request--which was
virtually only a delay in his liberation.  It was also possible
that Pinckney had worked upon the chivalrous sympathies of the man
by professing his disinclination to leave their devoted colleague,
Mrs. Brant, at the mercy of her antagonistic and cold-blooded
husband at such a crisis, and it is to be feared also that
Clarence, as a reputed lukewarm partisan, excited no personal
sympathy, even from his own party.  Howbeit, the deputy agreed to
delay Pinckney's journey for a parting interview with his fair
hostess.

How far this expressed the real sentiments of Captain Pinckney was
never known.  Whether his political association with Mrs. Brant had
developed into a warmer solicitude, understood or ignored by her,--
what were his hopes and aspirations regarding her future,--were by
the course of fate never disclosed.  A man of easy ethics, but
rigid artificialities of honor, flattered and pampered by class
prejudice, a so-called "man of the world," with no experience
beyond his own limited circle, yet brave and devoted to that, it
were well perhaps to leave this last act of his inefficient life as
it was accepted by the deputy.

Dismounting he approached the house from the garden.  He was
already familiar with the low arched doorway which led to the
business room, and from which he could gain admittance to the
patio, but it so chanced that he entered the dark passage at the
moment that Clarence had thrust Susy into the business room, and
heard its door shut sharply.  For an instant he believed that Mrs.
Brant had taken refuge there, but as he cautiously moved forward he
heard her voice in the patio beyond.  Its accents struck him as
pleading; an intense curiosity drew him further along the passage.
Suddenly her voice seemed to change to angry denunciation, and the
word "Liar" rang upon his ears.  It was followed by his own name
uttered sardonically by Clarence, the swift rustle of a skirt, the
clash of the gate, and then--forgetting everything, he burst into
the patio.

Clarence was just turning from the gate with the marks of his
wife's hand still red on his white cheek.  He saw Captain
Pinckney's eyes upon it, and the faint, half-malicious, half-
hysteric smile upon his lips.  But without a start or gesture of
surprise he locked the gate, and turning to him, said with frigid
significance,--

"I thank you for returning so promptly, and for recognizing the
only thing I now require at your hand."

But Captain Pinckney had recovered his supercilious ease with the
significant demand.

"You seem to have had something already from another's hand, sir,
but I am at your service," he said lightly.

"You will consider that I have accepted it from you," said
Clarence, drawing closer to him with a rigid face.  "I suppose it
will not be necessary for me to return it--to make you understand
me."

"Go on," said Pinckney, flushing slightly.  "Make your terms; I am
ready."

"But I'm not," said the unexpected voice of the deputy at the
grille of the gateway.  "Excuse my interfering, gentlemen, but this
sort o' thing ain't down in my schedule.  I've let this gentleman,"
pointing to Captain Pinckney, "off for a minit to say 'good-by' to
a lady, who I reckon has just ridden off in her buggy with her
servant without saying by your leave, but I didn't calkelate to let
him inter another business, which, like as not, may prevent me from
delivering his body safe and sound into court.  You hear me!"  As
Clarence opened the gate he added, "I don't want ter spoil sport
between gents, but it's got to come in after I've done my duty."

"I'll meet you, sir, anywhere, and with what weapons you choose,"
said Pinckney, turning angrily upon Clarence, "as soon as this
farce--for which you and your friends are responsible--is over."
He was furious at the intimation that Mrs. Brant had escaped him.

A different thought was in the husband's mind.  "But what assurance
have I that you are going on with the deputy?" he said with
purposely insulting deliberation.

"My word, sir," said Captain Pinckney sharply.

"And if that ain't enuff, there's mine!" said the deputy.  "For if
this gentleman swerves to the right or left betwixt this and Santa
Inez, I'll blow a hole through him myself.  And that," he added
deprecatingly, "is saying a good deal for a man who doesn't want to
spoil sport, and for the matter of that is willing to stand by and
see fair play done at Santa Inez any time to-morrow before
breakfast."

"Then I can count on you," said Clarence, with a sudden impulse
extending his hand.

The man hesitated a moment and then grasped it.

"Well, I wasn't expecting that," he said slowly; "but you look as
if you meant business, and if you ain't got anybody else to see you
through, I'm thar!  I suppose this gentleman will have his friends."

"I shall be there at six with my seconds," said Pinckney curtly.
"Lead on."

The gate closed behind them.  Clarence stood looking around the
empty patio and the silent house, from which it was now plain that
the servants had been withdrawn to insure the secrecy of the
conspiracy.  Cool and collected as he knew he was, he remained for
a moment in hesitation.  Then the sound of voices came to his ear
from the garden room, the light frivolity of Susy's laugh and
Hooker's huskier accents.  He had forgotten they were there--he had
forgotten their existence!

Trusting still to his calmness, he called to Hooker in his usual
voice.  That gentleman appeared with a face which his attempts to
make unconcerned and impassive had, however, only deepened into
funereal gravity.

"I have something to attend to," said Clarence, with a faint smile,
"and I must ask you and Susy to excuse me for a little while.  She
knows the house perfectly, and will call the servants from the
annex to provide you both with refreshment until I join you a
little later."  Satisfied from Hooker's manner that they knew
nothing of his later interview with Pinckney, he turned away and
ascended to his own room.

There he threw himself into an armchair by the dim light of a
single candle as if to reflect.  But he was conscious, even then,
of his own calmness and want of excitement, and that no reflection
was necessary.  What he had done and what he intended to do was
quite clear, there was no alternative suggested or to be even
sought after.  He had that sense of relief which comes with the
climax of all great struggles, even of defeat.

He had never known before how hopeless and continuous had been that
struggle until now it was over.  He had no fear of tomorrow, he
would meet it as he had to-day, with the same singular consciousness
of being equal to the occasion.  There was even no necessity of
preparation for it; his will, leaving his fortune to his wife,--
which seemed a slight thing now in this greater separation,--was
already in his safe in San Francisco, his pistols were in the next
room.  He was even slightly disturbed by his own insensibility, and
passed into his wife's bedroom partly in the hope of disturbing his
serenity by some memento of their past.  There was no disorder of
flight--everything was in its place, except the drawer of her desk,
which was still open, as if she had taken something from it as an
afterthought.  There were letters and papers there, some of his own
and some in Captain Pinckney's handwriting.  It did not occur to him
to look at them--even to justify himself, or excuse her.  He knew
that his hatred of Captain Pinckney was not so much that he believed
him her lover, as his sudden conviction that she was like him!  He
was the male of her species--a being antagonistic to himself, whom
he could fight, and crush, and revenge himself upon.  But most of
all he loathed his past, not on account of her, but of his own
weakness that had made him her dupe and a misunderstood man to his
friends.  He had been derelict of duty in his unselfish devotion to
her; he had stifled his ambition, and underrated his own
possibilities.  No wonder that others had accepted him at his own
valuation.  Clarence Brant was a modest man, but the egotism of
modesty is more fatal than that of pretension, for it has the
haunting consciousness of superior virtue.

He re-entered his own room and again threw himself into his chair.
His calm was being succeeded by a physical weariness; he remembered
he had not slept the night before, and he ought to take some rest
to be fresh in the early morning.  Yet he must also show himself
before his self-invited guests,--Susy and her husband,--or their
suspicions would be aroused.  He would try to sleep for a little
while in the chair before he went downstairs again.  He closed his
eyes oddly enough on a dim dreamy recollection of Susy in the old
days, in the little madrono hollow where she had once given him a
rendezvous.  He forgot the maturer and critical uneasiness with
which he had then received her coquettish and willful advances,
which he now knew was the effect of the growing dominance of Mrs.
Peyton over him, and remembered only her bright, youthful eyes, and
the kisses he had pressed upon her soft fragrant cheek.  The
faintness he had felt when waiting in the old rose garden, a few
hours ago, seemed to steal on him once more, and to lapse into a
pleasant drowsiness.  He even seemed again to inhale the perfume of
the roses.

"Clarence!"

He started.  He had been sleeping, but the voice sounded strangely
real.

A light, girlish laugh followed.  He sprang to his feet.  It was
Susy standing beside him--and Susy even as she looked in the old
days!

For with a flash of her old audacity, aided by her familiar
knowledge of the house and the bunch of household keys she had
found, which dangled from her girdle, as in the old fashion, she
had disinterred one of her old frocks from a closet, slipped it on,
and unloosening her brown hair had let it fall in rippling waves
down her back.  It was Susy in her old girlishness, with the
instinct of the grown actress in the arrangement of her short skirt
over her pretty ankles and the half-conscious pose she had taken.

"Poor dear old Clarence," she said, with dancing eyes; "I might
have won a dozen pairs of gloves from you while you slept there.
But you're tired, dear old boy, and you've had a hard time of it.
No matter; you've shown yourself a man at last, and I'm proud of
you."

Half ashamed of the pleasure he felt even in his embarrassment,
Clarence stammered, "But this change--this dress."

Susy clapped her hands like a child.  "I knew it would surprise
you!  It's an old frock I wore the year I went away with auntie.  I
knew where it was hidden, and fished it out again with these keys,
Clarence; it seemed so like old times.  Lord! when I was with the
old servants again, and you didn't come down, I just felt as if I'd
never been away, and I just rampaged free.  It seemed to me, don't
you know, not as if I'd just come, but as if I'd always been right
here, and it was you who'd just come.  Don't you understand!  Just
as you came when me and Mary Rogers were here; don't you remember
her, Clarence, and how she used to do 'gooseberry' for us?  Well,
just like that.  So I said to Jim, 'I don't know you any more--
get!' and I just slipped on this frock and ordered Manuela around
as I used to do--and she in fits of laughter; I reckon, Clarence,
she hasn't laughed as much since I left.  And then I thought of
you--perhaps worried and flustered as yet over things, and the
change, and I just slipped into the kitchen and I told old fat
Conchita to make some of these tortillas you know,--with sugar and
cinnamon sprinkled on top,--and I tied on an apron and brought 'em
up to you on a tray with a glass of that old Catalan wine you used
to like.  Then I sorter felt frightened when I got here, and I
didn't hear any noise, and I put the tray down in the hall and
peeped in and found you asleep.  Sit still, I'll fetch em."

She tripped out into the passage, returning with the tray, which
she put on the table beside Clarence, and then standing back a
little and with her hands tucked soubrette fashion in the tiny
pockets of her apron, gazed at him with a mischievous smile.

It was impossible not to smile back as he nibbled the crisp Mexican
cake and drank the old mission wine.  And Susy's tongue trilled an
accompaniment to his thanks.

"Lord! it seems so nice to be here--just you and me, Clarence--like
in the old days--with nobody naggin' and swoopin' round after you.
Don't be greedy, Clarence, but give me a cake."  She took one and
finished the dregs of his glass.

Then sitting on the arm of his chair, she darted a violet ray of
half reproach and half mischievousness into his amused and
retrospective eyes.  "There used to be room for two in that chair,
Klarns."

The use of the old childish diminutive for his name seemed to him
natural as her familiarity, and he moved a little sideways to make
room for her with an instinct of pleasure, but the same sense of
irresponsibility that had characterized his reflections.
Nevertheless, he looked critically into the mischievous eyes, and
said quietly,--

"Where is your husband?"

There was no trace of embarrassment, apology, or even of
consciousness in her pretty face as she replied, passing her
hand lightly through his hair,--

"Oh, Jim?  I've packed him off!"

"Packed him off!" echoed Clarence, slightly astonished.

"Yes, to Fair Plains, full tilt after your wife's buggy.  You see,
Clarence, after the old cat--that's your wife, please--left, I
wanted to make sure she had gone, and wasn't hangin' round to lead
you off again with your leg tied to her apron string like a
chicken's!  No! I said to Jim, 'Just you ride after her until you
see she's safe and sound in the down coach from Fair Plains without
her knowin' it, and if she's inclined to hang back or wobble any,
you post back here and let me know!'  I told him I would stay and
look after you to see you didn't bolt too!"  She laughed, and then
added, "But I didn't think I should fall into the old ways so soon,
and have such a nice time.  Did you, Clarence?"

She looked so irresponsible, sitting there with her face near his,
and so childishly, or perhaps thoughtlessly, happy, that he could
only admire her levity, and even the slight shock that her flippant
allusion to his wife had given him seemed to him only a weakness of
his own.  After all, was not hers the true philosophy?  Why should
not these bright eyes see things more clearly than his own?
Nevertheless, with his eyes still fixed upon them, he continued,--

"And Jim was willing to go?"

She stopped, with her fingers still lifting a lock of his hair.
"Why, yes, you silly--why shouldn't he?  I'd like to see him
refuse.  Why, Lord! Jim will do anything I ask him."  She put down
the lock of hair, and suddenly looking full into his eyes, said,
"That's just the difference between him and me, and you and--that
woman!"

"Then you love him!"

"About as much as you love her," she said, with an unaffected
laugh; "only he don't wind me around his finger."

No doubt she was right for all her thoughtlessness, and yet he was
going to fight about that woman to-morrow!  No--he forgot; he was
going to fight Captain Pinckney because he was like her!

Susy had put her finger on the crease between his brows which this
supposition had made, and tried to rub it out.

"You know it as well as I do, Clarence," she said, with a pretty
wrinkling of her own brows, which was her nearest approach to
thoughtfulness.  "You know you never really liked her, only you
thought her ways were grander and more proper than mine, and you
know you were always a little bit of a snob and a prig too--dear
boy.  And Mrs. Peyton was--bless my soul!--a Benham and a planter's
daughter, and I--I was only a picked-up orphan!  That's where Jim
is better than you--now sit still, goosey!--even if I don't like
him as much.  Oh, I know what you're always thinking, you're
thinking we're both exaggerated and theatrical, ain't you?  But
don't you think it's a heap better to be exaggerated and theatrical
about things that are just sentimental and romantic than to be so
awfully possessed and overcome about things that are only real?
There, you needn't stare at me so!  It's true.  You've had your
fill of grandeur and propriety, and--here you are.  And," she added
with a little chuckle, as she tucked up her feet and leaned a
little closer to him, "here's ME."

He did not speak, but his arm quite unconsciously passed round her
small waist.

"You see, Clarence," she went on with equal unconsciousness of the
act, "you ought never to have let me go--never!  You ought to have
kept me here--or run away with me.  And you oughtn't to have tried
to make me proper.  And you oughtn't to have driven me to flirt
with that horrid Spaniard, and you oughtn't to have been so
horribly cold and severe when I did.  And you oughtn't to have made
me take up with Jim, who was the only one who thought me his equal.
I might have been very silly and capricious; I might have been very
vain, but my vanity isn't a bit worse than your pride; my love of
praise and applause in the theatre isn't a bit more horrid than
your fears of what people might think of you or me.  That's gospel
truth, isn't it, Clarence?  Tell me!  Don't look that way and this--
look at ME!  I ain't poisonous, Clarence.  Why, one of your cheeks
is redder than the other, Clarence; that's the one that's turned
from me.  Come," she went on, taking the lapels of his coat between
her hands and half shaking him, half drawing him nearer her bright
face.  "Tell me--isn't it true?"

"I was thinking of you just now when I fell asleep, Susy," he said.
He did not know why he said it; he had not intended to tell her, he
had only meant to avoid a direct answer to her question; yet even
now he went on.  "And I thought of you when I was out there in the
rose garden waiting to come in here."

"You did?" she said, drawing in her breath.  A wave of delicate
pink color came up to her very eyes, it seemed to him as quickly
and as innocently as when she was a girl.  "And what DID you think,
Klarns," she half whispered--"tell me."

He did not speak, but answered her blue eyes and then her lips, as
her arms slipped quite naturally around his neck.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

The dawn was breaking as Clarence and Jim Hooker emerged together
from the gate of the casa.  Mr. Hooker looked sleepy.  He had
found, after his return from Fair Plains, that his host had an
early engagement at Santa Inez, and he had insisted upon rising to
see him off.  It was with difficulty, indeed, that Clarence could
prevent his accompanying him.  Clarence had not revealed to Susy
the night before the real object of his journey, nor did Hooker
evidently suspect it, yet when the former had mounted his horse, he
hesitated for an instant, extending his hand.

"If I should happen to be detained," he began with a half smile.

But Jim was struggling with a yawn.  "That's all right--don't mind
us," he said, stretching his arms.  Clarence's hesitating hand
dropped to his side, and with a light reckless laugh and a half
sense of providential relief he galloped away.

What happened immediately thereafter during his solitary ride to
Santa Inez, looking back upon it in after years, seemed but a
confused recollection, more like a dream.  The long stretches of
vague distance, gradually opening clearer with the rising sun in an
unclouded sky; the meeting with a few early or belated travelers
and his unconscious avoidance of them, as if they might know of his
object; the black shadows of foreshortened cattle rising before him
on the plain and arousing the same uneasy sensation of their being
waylaying men; the wondering recognition of houses and landmarks he
had long been familiar with; his purposeless attempts to recall the
circumstances in which he had known them--all these were like a
dream.  So, too, were the recollections of the night before, the
episode with Susy, already mingled and blended with the memory of
their previous past; his futile attempts to look forward to the
future, always, however, abandoned with relief at the thought that
the next few hours might make them unnecessary.  So also was the
sudden realization that Santa Inez was before him, when he had
thought he was not yet halfway there, and as he dismounted before
the Court House his singular feeling--followed, however, by no fear
or distress--was that he had come so early to the rendezvous that
he was not yet quite prepared for it.

This same sense of unreality pervaded his meeting with the deputy
sheriff, at the news that the Federal judge had, as was expected,
dismissed the prisoners on their own recognizances, and that
Captain Pinckney was at the hotel at breakfast.  In the like
abstracted manner he replied to the one or two questions of the
deputy, exhibited the pistols he had brought with him, and finally
accompanied him to a little meadow hidden by trees, below the
hotel, where the other principal and his seconds were awaiting
them.  And here he awoke--clear-eyed, keen, forceful, and intense!

So stimulated were his faculties that his sense of hearing in its
acuteness took in every word of the conversation between the
seconds, a few paces distant.  He heard his adversary's seconds say
carelessly to the deputy sheriff, "I presume this is a case where
there will be no apology or mediation," and the deputy's reply, "I
reckon my man means business, but he seems a little queer."  He
heard the other second laugh, and say lightly, "They're apt to be
so when it's their first time out," followed by the more anxious
aside of the other second as the deputy turned away,--"Yes, but by
G-d I don't like his looks!"  His sense of sight was also so acute
that having lost the choice of position, when the coin was tossed,
and being turned with his face to the sun, even through the glare
he saw, with unerring distinctness of outline, the black-coated
figure of his opponent moved into range--saw the perfect outline of
his features, and how the easy, supercilious smile, as he threw
away his cigar, appeared to drop out of his face with a kind of
vacant awe as he faced him.  He felt his nerves become as steel as
the counting began, and at the word "three," knew he had fired by
the recoil of the pistol in his leveled hand, simultaneously with
its utterance.  And at the same moment, still standing like a rock,
he saw his adversary miserably collapse, his legs grotesquely
curving inwards under him,--without even the dignity of death in
his fall,--and so sink helplessly like a felled bull to the ground.
Still erect, and lowering only the muzzle of his pistol, as a thin
feather of smoke curled up its shining side, he saw the doctor and
seconds run quickly to the heap, try to lift its limp impotence
into shape, and let it drop again with the words, "Right through
the forehead, by G-d!"

"You've done for him," said the deputy, turning to Clarence with a
singular look of curiosity, "and I reckon you had better get out of
this mighty quick.  They didn't expect it; they're just ragin';
they may round on you--and"--he added, more slowly, "they seem to
have just found out who you are."

Even while he was speaking, Clarence, with his quickened ear, heard
the words, "One of Hamilton Brant's pups" "Just like his father,"
from the group around the dead man.  He did not hesitate, but
walked coolly towards them.  Yet a certain fierce pride--which he
had never known before--stirred in his veins as their voices hushed
and they half recoiled before him.

"Am I to understand from my second, gentlemen," he said, looking
round the group, "that you are not satisfied?"

"The fight was square enough," said Pinckney's second in some
embarrassment, "but I reckon that he," pointing to the dead man,
"did not know who you were."

"Do you mean that he did not know that I was the son of a man
proficient in the use of arms?"

"I reckon that's about it," returned the second, glancing at the
others.

"I am glad to say, sir, that I have a better opinion of his
courage," said Clarence, lifting his hat to the dead body as he
turned away.

Yet he was conscious of no remorse, concern, or even pity in his
act.  Perhaps this was visible in his face, for the group appeared
awed by this perfection of the duelist's coolness, and even
returned his formal parting salutation with a vague and timid
respect.  He thanked the deputy, regained the hotel, saddled his
horse and galloped away.

But not towards the Rancho.  Now that he could think of his future,
that had no place in his reflections; even the episode of Susy was
forgotten in the new and strange conception of himself and his
irresponsibility which had come upon him with the killing of
Pinckney and the words of his second.  It was his dead father who
had stiffened his arm and directed the fatal shot!  It was
hereditary influences--which others had been so quick to recognize--
that had brought about this completing climax of his trouble.  How
else could he account for it that he--a conscientious, peaceful,
sensitive man, tender and forgiving as he had believed himself to
be--could now feel so little sorrow or compunction for his
culminating act?  He had read of successful duelists who were
haunted by remorse for their first victim; who retained a terrible
consciousness of the appearance of the dead man; he had no such
feeling; he had only a grim contentment in the wiped-out
inefficient life, and contempt for the limp and helpless body.  He
suddenly recalled his callousness as a boy when face to face with
the victims of the Indian massacre, his sense of fastidious
superciliousness in the discovery of the body of Susy's mother!--
surely it was the cold blood of his father influencing him ever
thus.  What had he to do with affection, with domestic happiness,
with the ordinary ambitions of man's life--whose blood was frozen
at its source!  Yet even with this very thought came once more the
old inconsistent tenderness he had as a boy lavished upon the
almost unknown and fugitive father who had forsaken his childish
companionship, and remembered him only by secret gifts.  He
remembered how he had worshiped him even while the pious padres at
San Jose were endeavoring to eliminate this terrible poison from
his blood and combat his hereditary instinct in his conflicts with
his school-fellows.  And it was a part of this inconsistency that,
riding away from the scene of his first bloodshed, his eyes were
dimmed with moisture, not for his victim, but for the one being who
he believed had impelled him to the act.

This and more was in his mind during his long ride to Fair Plains,
his journey by coach to the Embarcadero, his midnight passage
across the dark waters of the bay, and his re-entrance to San
Francisco, but what should be his future was still unsettled.

As he wound round the crest of Russian Hill and looked down again
upon the awakened city, he was startled to see that it was
fluttering and streaming with bunting.  From every public building
and hotel, from the roofs of private houses, and even the windows
of lonely dwellings, flapped and waved the striped and starry
banner.  The steady breath of the sea carried it out from masts and
yards of ships at their wharves, from the battlements of the forts
Alcatraz and Yerba Bueno.  He remembered that the ferryman had told
him that the news from Fort Sumter had swept the city with a
revulsion of patriotic sentiment, and that there was no doubt that
the State was saved to the Union.  He looked down upon it with
haggard, bewildered eyes, and then a strange gasp and fullness of
the throat!  For afar a solitary bugle had blown the "reveille" at
Fort Alcatraz.



PART II.

CHAPTER I.


Night at last, and the stir and tumult of a great fight over.  Even
the excitement that had swept this portion of the battlefield--only
a small section of a vaster area of struggle--into which a brigade
had marched, held its own, been beaten back, recovered its ground,
and pursuing, had passed out of it forever, leaving only its dead
behind, and knowing nothing more of that struggle than its own
impact and momentum--even this wild excitement had long since
evaporated with the stinging smoke of gunpowder, the acrid smell of
burning rags from the clothing of a dead soldier fired by a
bursting shell, or the heated reek of sweat and leather.  A cool
breath that seemed to bring back once more the odor of the upturned
earthworks along the now dumb line of battle began to move from the
suggestive darkness beyond.

But into that awful penetralia of death and silence there was no
invasion--there had been no retreat.  A few of the wounded had been
brought out, under fire, but the others had been left with the dead
for the morning light and succor.  For it was known that in that
horrible obscurity, riderless horses, frantic with the smell of
blood, galloped wildly here and there, or, maddened by wounds,
plunged furiously at the intruder; that the wounded soldier, still
armed, could not always distinguish friend from foe or from the
ghouls of camp followers who stripped the dead in the darkness and
struggled with the dying.  A shot or two heard somewhere in that
obscurity counted as nothing with the long fusillade that had swept
it in the daytime; the passing of a single life, more or less,
amounted to little in the long roll-call of the day's slaughter.

But with the first beams of the morning sun--and the slowly moving
"relief detail" from the camp--came a weird half-resurrection of
that ghastly field.  Then it was that the long rays of sunlight,
streaming away a mile beyond the battle line, pointed out the first
harvest of the dead where the reserves had been posted.  There they
lay in heaps and piles, killed by solid shot or bursting shells
that had leaped the battle line to plunge into the waiting ranks
beyond.  As the sun lifted higher its beams fell within the range
of musketry fire, where the dead lay thicker,--even as they had
fallen when killed outright,--with arms extended and feet at all
angles to the field.  As it touched these dead upturned faces,
strangely enough it brought out no expression of pain or anguish--
but rather as if death had arrested them only in surprise and awe.
It revealed on the lips of those who had been mortally wounded and
had turned upon their side the relief which death had brought their
suffering, sometimes shown in a faint smile.  Mounting higher, it
glanced upon the actual battle line, curiously curving for the
shelter of walls, fences, and breastworks, and here the dead lay,
even as when they lay and fired, their faces prone in the grass but
their muskets still resting across the breastworks.  Exposed to
grape and canister from the battery on the ridge, death had come to
them mercifully also--through the head and throat.  And now the
whole field lay bare in the sunlight, broken with grotesque shadows
cast from sitting, crouching, half-recumbent but always rigid
figures, which might have been effigies on their own monuments.
One half-kneeling soldier, with head bowed between his stiffened
hands, might have stood for a carven figure of Grief at the feet of
his dead comrade.  A captain, shot through the brain in the act of
mounting a wall, lay sideways half across it, his lips parted with
a word of command; his sword still pointing over the barrier the
way that they should go.

But it was not until the sun had mounted higher that it struck the
central horror of the field and seemed to linger there in dazzling
persistence, now and then returning to it in startling flashes that
it might be seen of men and those who brought succor.  A tiny brook
had run obliquely near the battle line.  It was here that, the
night before the battle, friend and foe had filled their canteens
side by side with soldierly recklessness--or perhaps a higher
instinct--purposely ignoring each other's presence; it was here
that the wounded had afterwards crept, crawled, and dragged
themselves, here they had pushed, wrangled, striven, and fought for
a draught of that precious fluid which assuaged the thirst of their
wounds--or happily put them out of their misery forever; here
overborne, crushed, suffocated by numbers, pouring their own blood
into the flood, and tumbling after it with their helpless bodies,
they dammed the stream, until recoiling, red and angry, it had
burst its banks and overflowed the cotton-field in a broad pool
that now sparkled in the sunlight.  But below this human dam--a
mile away--where the brook still crept sluggishly, the ambulance
horses sniffed and started from it.

The detail moved on slowly, doing their work expeditiously, and
apparently callously, but really only with that mechanical movement
that saves emotion.  Only once they were moved to an outbreak of
indignation,--the discovery of the body of an officer whose pockets
were turned inside out, but whose hand was still tightly grasped on
his buttoned waistcoat, as if resisting the outrage that had been
done while still in life.  As the men disengaged the stiffened hand
something slipped from the waistcoat to the ground.  The corporal
picked it up and handed it to his officer.  It was a sealed packet.
The officer received it with the carelessness which long experience
of these pathetic missives from the dying to their living relations
had induced, and dropped it in the pocket of his tunic, with the
half-dozen others that he had picked up that morning, and moved on
with the detail.  A little further on they halted, in the attitude
of attention, as a mounted officer appeared, riding slowly down the
line.

There was something more than the habitual respect of their
superior in their faces as he came forward.  For it was the general
who had commanded the brigade the day before,--the man who had
leaped with one bound into the foremost rank of military leaders.
It was his invincible spirit that had led the advance, held back
defeat against overwhelming numbers, sustained the rally, impressed
his subordinate officers with his own undeviating purpose, and even
infused them with an almost superstitious belief in his destiny of
success.  It was this man who had done what it was deemed impossible
to do,--what even at the time it was thought unwise and unstrategic
to do,--who had held a weak position, of apparently no importance,
under the mandate of an incomprehensible order from his superior,
which at best asked only for a sacrifice and was rewarded with a
victory.  He had decimated his brigade, but the wounded and dying
had cheered him as he passed, and the survivors had pursued the
enemy until the bugle called them back.  For such a record he looked
still too young and scholarly, albeit his handsome face was dark and
energetic, and his manner taciturn.

His quick eye had already caught sight of the rifled body of the
officer, and contracted.  As the captain of the detail saluted him
he said curtly,--

"I thought the orders were to fire upon any one desecrating the
dead?"

"They are, General; but the hyenas don't give us a chance.  That's
all yonder poor fellow saved from their claws," replied the
officer, as he held up the sealed packet.  "It has no address."

The general took it, examined the envelope, thrust it into his
belt, and said,--

"I will take charge of it."

The sound of horses' hoofs came from the rocky roadside beyond
the brook.  Both men turned.  A number of field officers were
approaching.

"The division staff," said the captain, in a lower voice, falling
back.

They came slowly forward, a central figure on a gray horse leading
here--as in history.  A short, thick-set man with a grizzled beard
closely cropped around an inscrutable mouth, and the serious
formality of a respectable country deacon in his aspect, which even
the major-generals blazon on the shoulder-strap of his loose tunic
on his soldierly seat in the saddle could not entirely obliterate.
He had evidently perceived the general of brigade, and quickened
his horse as the latter drew up.  The staff followed more leisurely,
but still with some curiosity, to witness the meeting of the first
general of the army with the youngest.  The division general
saluted, but almost instantly withdrew his leathern gauntlet, and
offered his bared hand to the brigadier.  The words of heroes are
scant.  The drawn-up detail, the waiting staff listened.  This was
all they heard:--

"Halleck tells me you're from California?"

"Yes, General."

"Ah! I lived there, too, in the early days."

"Wonderful country.  Developed greatly since my time, I suppose?"

"Yes, General."

"Great resources; finest wheat-growing country in the world, sir.
You don't happen to know what the actual crop was this year?"

"Hardly, General! but something enormous."

"Yes, I have always said it would be.  Have a cigar?"

He handed his cigar-case to the brigadier.  Then he took one
himself, lighted it at the smouldering end of the one he had taken
from his mouth, was about to throw the stump carelessly down, but,
suddenly recollecting himself, leaned over his horse, and dropped
it carefully a few inches away from the face of a dead soldier.
Then, straightening himself in the saddle, he shoved his horse
against the brigadier, moving him a little further on, while a
slight movement of his hand kept the staff from following.

"A heavy loss here!"

"I'm afraid so, General."

"It couldn't be helped.  We had to rush in your brigade to gain
time, and occupy the enemy, until we could change front."

The young general looked at the shrewd, cold eyes of his chief.

"Change front?" he echoed.

"Yes.  Before a gun was fired, we discovered that the enemy was in
complete possession of all our plans, and knew every detail of our
forward movement.  All had to be changed."

The younger man now instantly understood the incomprehensible order
of the day before.

The general of division continued, with his first touch of official
formality,--

"You understand, therefore, General Brant, that in the face of this
extraordinary treachery, the utmost vigilance is required, and a
complete surveillance of your camp followers and civilians, to
detect the actual spy within our lines, or the traitor we are
harboring, who has become possessed of this information.  You will
overhaul your brigade, and weed out all suspects, and in the
position which you are to take to-morrow, and the plantation you
will occupy, you will see that your private quarters, as well as
your lines, are cleared of all but those you can vouch for."

He reined in his horse, again extended his hand, saluted, and
rejoined his staff.

Brigadier-General Clarence Brant remained for a moment with his
head bent in thoughtful contemplation of the coolness of his
veteran chief under this exciting disclosure, and the strategy with
which he had frustrated the traitor's success.  Then his eye caught
the sealed packet in his belt.  He mechanically drew it out, and
broke the seal.  The envelope was filled with papers and memorandums.
But as he looked at them his face darkened and his brow knit.  He
glanced quickly around him.  The staff had trotted away; the captain
and his detail were continuing their work at a little distance.  He
took a long breath, for he was holding in his hand a tracing of
their camp, even of the position he was to occupy tomorrow, and a
detailed account of the movements, plans, and force of the whole
division as had been arranged in council of war the day before the
battle!  But there was no indication of the writer or his intentions.

He thrust the papers hurriedly back into the envelope, but placed
it, this time, in his breast.  He galloped towards the captain.

"Let me see again the officer from whom you took that packet!"

The captain led him to where the body lay, with others, extended
more decently on the grass awaiting removal.  General Brant with
difficulty repressed an ejaculation.

"Why, it's one of our own men," he said quickly.

"Yes, General.  They say it's Lieutenant Wainwright, a regular, of
the paymaster general's department."

"Then what was he doing here?" asked General Brant sternly.

"I can't make out, sir, unless he went into the last advance as a
volunteer.  Wanted to see the fight, I suppose.  He was a dashing
fellow, a West Pointer,--and a Southerner, too,--a Virginian."

"A Southerner!" echoed Brant quickly.

"Yes, sir."

"Search him again," said Brant quietly.  He had recovered his usual
coolness, and as the captain again examined the body, he took out
his tablets and wrote a few lines.  It was an order to search the
quarters of Lieutenant Wainwright and bring all papers, letters,
and documents to him.  He then beckoned one of the detail towards
him.  "Take that to the provost marshal at once.  Well, Captain,"
he added calmly, as the officer again approached him, "what do you
find?"

"Only this, sir," returned the captain, with a half smile, producing
a small photograph.  "I suppose it was overlooked, too."

He handed it to Brant.

There was a sudden fixing of his commanding officer's eyes, but his
face did not otherwise change.

"It's the usual find, General.  Always a photograph!  But this time
a handsome woman!"

"Very," said Clarence Brant quietly.  It was the portrait of his
own wife.


CHAPTER II.


Nevertheless, so complete was his control of voice and manner that,
as he rode on to his quarters, no one would have dreamed that
General Brant had just looked upon the likeness of the wife from
whom he had parted in anger four years ago.  Still less would they
have suspected the strange fear that came upon him that in some way
she was connected with the treachery he had just discovered.  He
had heard from her only once, and then through her late husband's
lawyer, in regard to her Californian property, and believed that
she had gone to her relations in Alabama, where she had identified
herself with the Southern cause, even to the sacrifice of her
private fortune.  He had heard her name mentioned in the Southern
press as a fascinating society leader, and even coadjutrix of
Southern politicians,--but he had no reason to believe that she had
taken so active or so desperate a part in the struggle.  He tried
to think that his uneasiness sprang from his recollection of the
previous treachery of Captain Pinckney, and the part that she had
played in the Californian conspiracy, although he had long since
acquitted her of the betrayal of any nearer trust.  But there was a
fateful similarity in the two cases.  There was no doubt that this
Lieutenant Wainwright was a traitor in the camp,--that he had
succumbed to the usual sophistry of his class in regard to his
superior allegiance to his native State.  But was there the
inducement of another emotion, or was the photograph only the
souvenir of a fascinating priestess of rebellion, whom the dead man
had met?  There was perhaps less of feeling than scorn in the first
suggestion, but he was nevertheless relieved when the provost
marshal found no other incriminating papers in Wainwright's
effects.  Nor did he reveal to the division general the finding of
the photograph.  It was sufficient to disclose the work of the
traitor without adding what might be a clue to his wife's
participation in it, near or remote.  There was risk enough in the
former course,--which his duty made imperative.  He hardly dared to
think of the past day's slaughter, which--there was no doubt now--
had been due to the previous work of the spy, and how his brigade
had been selected--by the irony of Fate--to suffer for and yet
retrieve it.  If she had had a hand in this wicked plot, ought he
to spare her?  Or was his destiny and hers to be thus monstrously
linked together?

Luckily, however, the expiation of the chief offender and the
timely discovery of his papers enabled the division commander to
keep the affair discreetly silent, and to enjoin equal secrecy on
the part of Brant.  The latter, however, did not relax his
vigilance, and after the advance the next day he made a minute
inspection of the ground he was to occupy, its approaches and
connections with the outlying country, and the rebel lines;
increased the stringency of picket and sentry regulations, and
exercised a rigid surveillance of non-combatants and civilians
within the lines, even to the lowest canteener or camp follower.
Then he turned his attention to the house he was to occupy as his
headquarters.

It was a fine specimen of the old colonial planter's house, with
its broad veranda, its great detached offices and negro quarters,
and had, thus far, escaped the ravages and billeting of the war.
It had been occupied by its owner up to a few days before the
engagement, and so great had been the confidence of the enemy in
their success that it had been used as the Confederate headquarters
on the morning of the decisive battle.  Jasmine and rose, unstained
by the sulphur of gunpowder, twined around its ruined columns and
half hid the recessed windows; the careless flower garden was still
in its unkempt and unplucked luxuriance; the courtyard before the
stables alone showed marks of the late military occupancy, and was
pulverized by the uneasy horse-hoofs of the waiting staff.  But the
mingled impress of barbaric prodigality with patriarchal simplicity
was still there in the domestic arrangements of a race who lived on
half equal familiarity with strangers and their own servants.

The negro servants still remained, with a certain cat-like fidelity
to the place, and adapted themselves to the Northern invaders with
a childlike enjoyment of the novelty of change.  Brant, nevertheless,
looked them over with an experienced eye, and satisfied himself of
their trustworthiness; there was the usual number of "boys,"
gray-haired and grizzled in body service, and the "mammys" and
"aunties" of the kitchen.  There were two or three rooms in the wing
which still contained private articles, pictures and souvenirs of
the family, and a "young lady's" boudoir, which Brant, with
characteristic delicacy, kept carefully isolated and intact from his
military household, and accessible only to the family servants.  The
room he had selected for himself was nearest it,--a small, plainly
furnished apartment, with an almost conventual simplicity in its
cold, white walls and draperies, and the narrow, nun-like bed.  It
struck him that it might have belonged to some prim elder daughter
or maiden aunt, who had acted as housekeeper, as it commanded the
wing and servants' offices, with easy access to the central hall.

There followed a week of inactivity in which Brant felt a singular
resemblance in this Southern mansion to the old casa at Robles.
The afternoon shadows of the deep verandas recalled the old
monastic gloom of the Spanish house, which even the presence of a
lounging officer or waiting orderly could not entirely dissipate,
and the scent of the rose and jasmine from his windows overcame him
with sad memories.  He began to chafe under this inaction, and long
again for the excitement of the march and bivouac, in which, for
the past four years, he had buried his past.

He was sitting one afternoon alone before his reports and
dispatches, when this influence seemed so strong that he half
impulsively laid them aside to indulge in along reverie.  He was
recalling his last day at Robles, the early morning duel with
Pinckney, the return to San Francisco, and the sudden resolution
which sent him that day across the continent to offer his services
to the Government.  He remembered his delay in the Western town,
where a volunteer regiment was being recruited, his entrance into
it as a private, his rapid selection, through the force of his
sheer devotion and intelligent concentration, to the captaincy of
his company; his swift promotion on hard-fought fields to the head
of the regiment, and the singular success that had followed his
resistless energy, which left him no time to think of anything but
his duty.  The sudden intrusion of his wife upon his career now,
even in this accidental and perhaps innocent way, had seriously
unsettled him.

The shadows were growing heavier and deeper, it lacked only a few
moments of the sunset bugle, when he was recalled to himself by
that singular instinctive consciousness, common to humanity, of
being intently looked at.  He turned quickly,--the door behind him
closed softly.  He rose and slipped into the hall.  The tall figure
of a woman was going down the passage.  She was erect and graceful;
but, as she turned towards the door leading to the offices, he
distinctly saw the gaudily turbaned head and black silhouette of a
negress.  Nevertheless, he halted a moment at the door of the next
room.

"See who that woman is who has just passed, Mr. Martin.  She
doesn't seem to belong to the house."

The young officer rose, put on his cap, and departed.  In a few
moments he returned.

"Was she tall, sir, of a good figure, and very straight?"

"Yes."

"She is a servant of our neighbors, the Manlys, who occasionally
visits the servants here.  A mulatto, I think."

Brant reflected.  Many of the mulattoes and negresses were of good
figure, and the habit of carrying burdens on their heads gave them
a singularly erect carriage.

The lieutenant looked at his chief.

"Have you any orders to give concerning her, General?"

"No," said Brant, after a moment's pause, and turned away.

The officer smiled.  It seemed a good story to tell at mess of this
human weakness of his handsome, reserved, and ascetic-looking
leader.

A few mornings afterwards Brant was interrupted over his reports by
the almost abrupt entrance of the officer of the day.  His face was
flushed, and it was evident that only the presence of his superior
restrained his excitement.  He held a paper in his hand.

"A lady presents this order and pass from Washington, countersigned
by the division general."

"A lady?"

"Yes, sir, she is dressed as such.  But she has not only declined
the most ordinary civilities and courtesies we have offered her,
but she has insulted Mr. Martin and myself grossly, and demands to
be shown to you--alone."

Brant took the paper.  It was a special order from the President,
passing Miss Matilda Faulkner through the Federal lines to visit
her uncle's home, known as "Gray Oaks," now held and occupied as
the headquarters of Brant's Brigade, in order to arrange for the
preservation and disposal of certain family effects and private
property that still remained there, or to take and carry away such
property; and invoking all necessary aid and assistance from the
United States forces in such occupancy.  It was countersigned by
the division commander.  It was perfectly regular and of undoubted
authenticity.  He had heard of passes of this kind,--the terror of
the army,--issued in Washington under some strange controlling
influence and against military protest; but he did not let his
subordinate see the uneasiness with which it filled him.

"Show her in," he said quietly.

But she had already entered, brushing scornfully past the officer,
and drawing her skirt aside, as if contaminated: a very pretty
Southern girl, scornful and red-lipped, clad in a gray riding-
habit, and still carrying her riding-whip clenched ominously in her
slim, gauntleted hand!

"You have my permit in your hand," she said brusquely, hardly
raising her eyes to Brant.  "I suppose it's all straight enough,--
and even if it isn't, I don't reckon to be kept waiting with those
hirelings."

"Your 'permit' is 'straight' enough, Miss Faulkner," said Brant,
slowly reading her name from the document before him.  "But, as it
does not seem to include permission to insult my officers, you will
perhaps allow them first to retire."

He made a sign to the officer, who passed out of the door.

As it closed, he went on, in a gentle but coldly unimpassioned
voice,--

"I perceive you are a Southern lady, and therefore I need not
remind you that it is not considered good form to treat even the
slaves of those one does not like uncivilly, and I must, therefore,
ask you to keep your active animosity for myself."

The young girl lifted her eyes.  She had evidently not expected to
meet a man so young, so handsome, so refined, and so coldly
invincible in manner.  Still less was she prepared for that kind of
antagonism.  In keeping up her preconcerted attitude towards the
"Northern hireling," she had been met with official brusqueness,
contemptuous silence, or aggrieved indignation,--but nothing so
exasperating as this.  She even fancied that this elegant but
sardonic-looking soldier was mocking her.  She bit her red lip,
but, with a scornful gesture of her riding-whip, said,--

"I reckon that your knowledge of Southern ladies is, for certain
reasons, not very extensive."

"Pardon me; I have had the honor of marrying one."

Apparently more exasperated than before, she turned upon him
abruptly.

"You say my pass is all right.  Then I presume I may attend to the
business that brought me here."

"Certainly; but you will forgive me if I imagined that an
expression of contempt for your hosts was a part of it."

He rang a bell on the table.  It was responded to by an orderly.

"Send all the household servants here."

The room was presently filled with the dusky faces of the negro
retainers.  Here and there was the gleaming of white teeth, but a
majority of the assembly wore the true negro serious acceptance of
the importance of "an occasion."  One or two even affected an
official and soldierly bearing.  And, as he fully expected, there
were several glances of significant recognition of the stranger.

"You will give," said Brant sternly, "every aid and attention to
the wants of this young lady, who is here to represent the
interests of your old master.  As she will be entirely dependent
upon you in all things connected with her visit here, see to it
that she does not have to complain to me of any inattention,--or be
obliged to ask for other assistance."

As Miss Faulkner, albeit a trifle paler in the cheek, but as
scornful as ever, was about to follow the servants from the room,
Brant stopped her, with a coldly courteous gesture.

"You will understand, therefore, Miss Faulkner, that you have your
wish, and that you will not be exposed to any contact with the
members of my military family, nor they with you."

"Am I then to be a prisoner in this house--and under a free pass of
your--President?" she said indignantly.

"By no means!  You are free to come and go, and see whom you
please.  I have no power to control your actions.  But I have the
power to control theirs."

She swept furiously from the room.

"That is quite enough to fill her with a desire to flirt with every
man here," said Brant to himself, with a faint smile; "but I fancy
they have had a taste enough of her quality."

Nevertheless he sat down and wrote a few lines to the division
commander, pointing out that he had already placed the owner's
private property under strict surveillance, that it was cared for
and perfectly preserved by the household servants, and that the
pass was evidently obtained as a subterfuge.

To this he received a formal reply, regretting that the authorities
at Washington still found it necessary to put this kind of risk and
burden on the army in the field, but that the order emanated from
the highest authority, and must be strictly obeyed.  At the bottom
of the page was a characteristic line in pencil in the general's
own hand--"Not the kind that is dangerous."

A flush mounted Brant's cheeks, as if it contained not only a
hidden, but a personal significance.  He had thought of his own
wife!

Singularly enough, a day or two later, at dinner, the conversation
turned upon the intense sectional feeling of Southern women,
probably induced by their late experiences.  Brant, at the head of
the table, in his habitual abstraction, was scarcely following the
somewhat excited diction of Colonel Strangeways, one of his staff.

"No, sir," reiterated that indignant warrior, "take my word for it!
A Southern woman isn't to be trusted on this point, whether as a
sister, sweetheart, or wife.  And when she is trusted, she's bound
to get the better of the man in any of those relations!"

The dead silence that followed, the ominous joggle of a glass at
the speaker's elbow, the quick, sympathetic glance that Brant
instinctively felt was directed at his own face, and the abrupt
change of subject, could not but arrest his attention, even if he
had overlooked the speech.  His face, however, betrayed nothing.
It had never, however, occurred to him before that his family
affairs might be known--neither had he ever thought of keeping them
a secret.  It seemed so purely a personal and private misfortune,
that he had never dreamed of its having any public interest.  And
even now he was a little ashamed of what he believed was his
sensitiveness to mere conventional criticism, which, with the
instinct of a proud man, he had despised.

He was not far wrong in his sardonic intuition of the effect of his
prohibition upon Miss Faulkner's feelings.  Certainly that young
lady, when not engaged in her mysterious occupation of arranging
her uncle's effects, occasionally was seen in the garden, and in
the woods beyond.  Although her presence was the signal for the
"oblique" of any lounging "shoulder strap," or the vacant "front"
of a posted sentry, she seemed to regard their occasional proximity
with less active disfavor.  Once, when she had mounted the wall to
gather a magnolia blossom, the chair by which she had ascended
rolled over, leaving her on the wall.  At a signal from the guard-
room, two sappers and miners appeared carrying a scaling-ladder,
which they placed silently against the wall, and as silently
withdrew.  On another occasion, the same spirited young lady, whom
Brant was satisfied would have probably imperiled her life under
fire in devotion to her cause, was brought ignominiously to bay in
the field by that most appalling of domestic animals, the wandering
and untrammeled cow!  Brant could not help smiling as he heard the
quick, harsh call to "Turn out, guard," saw the men march stolidly
with fixed bayonets to the vicinity of the affrighted animal, who
fled, leaving the fair stranger to walk shamefacedly to the house.
He was surprised, however, that she should have halted before his
door, and with tremulous indignation, said,--

"I thank you, sir, for your chivalrousness in turning a defenseless
woman into ridicule."

"I regret, Miss Faulkner," began Brant gravely, "that you should
believe that I am able to control the advances of farmyard cattle
as easily as"--  But he stopped, as he saw that the angry flash of
her blue eyes, as she darted past him, was set in tears.  A little
remorseful on the following day, he added a word to his ordinary
cap-lifting when she went by, but she retained a reproachful
silence.  Later in the day, he received from her servant a
respectful request for an interview, and was relieved to find that
she entered his presence with no trace of her former aggression,
but rather with the resignation of a deeply injured, yet not
entirely unforgiving, woman.

"I thought," she began coldly, "that I ought to inform you that I
would probably be able to conclude my business here by the day
after to-morrow, and that you would then be relieved of my
presence.  I am aware--indeed," she added, bitterly, "I could
scarcely help perceiving, that it has been an exceedingly irksome
one."

"I trust," began Brant coldly, "that no gentleman of my command
has"--

"No!"

She interrupted him quickly, with a return of her former manner,
and a passionate sweep of the hand.

"Do you suppose for a moment that I am speaking--that I am even
thinking--of them?  What are they to me?"

"Thank you.  I am glad to know that they are nothing; and that I
may now trust that you have consulted my wishes, and have reserved
your animosity solely for me," returned Brant quietly.  "That being
so, I see no reason for your hurrying your departure in the least."

She rose instantly.

"I have," she said slowly, controlling herself with a slight
effort, "found some one who will take my duty off my hands.  She is
a servant of one of your neighbors,--who is an old friend of my
uncle's.  The woman is familiar with the house, and our private
property.  I will give her full instructions to act for me, and
even an authorization in writing, if you prefer it.  She is already
in the habit of coming here; but her visits will give you very
little trouble.  And, as she is a slave, or, as you call it, I
believe, a chattel, she will be already quite accustomed to the
treatment which her class are in the habit of receiving from
Northern hands."

Without waiting to perceive the effect of her Parthian shot, she
swept proudly out of the room.

"I wonder what she means," mused Brant, as her quick step died away
in the passage.  "One thing is certain,--a woman like that is
altogether too impulsive for a spy."

Later, in the twilight, he saw her walking in the garden.  There
was a figure at her side.  A little curious, he examined it more
closely from his window.  It was already familiar to him,--the
erect, shapely form of his neighbor's servant.  A thoughtful look
passed over his face as he muttered,--"So this is to be her
deputy."


CHAPTER III.


Called to a general council of officers at divisional headquarters
the next day, Brant had little time for further speculation
regarding his strange guest, but a remark from the division
commander, that he preferred to commit the general plan of a
movement then under discussion to their memories rather than to
written orders in the ordinary routine, seemed to show that his
chief still suspected the existence of a spy.  He, therefore, told
him of his late interview with Miss Faulkner, and her probable
withdrawal in favor of a mulatto neighbor.  The division commander
received the information with indifference.

"They're much too clever to employ a hussy like that, who shows her
hand at every turn, either as a spy or a messenger of spies,--and
the mulattoes are too stupid, to say nothing of their probable
fidelity to us.  No, General, if we are watched, it is by an eagle,
and not a mocking-bird.  Miss Faulkner has nothing worse about her
than her tongue; and there isn't the nigger blood in the whole South
that would risk a noose for her, or for any of their masters or
mistresses!"

It was, therefore, perhaps, with some mitigation of his usual
critical severity that he saw her walking before him alone in the
lane as he rode home to quarters.  She was apparently lost in a
half-impatient, half-moody reverie, which even the trotting hoof-
beats of his own and his orderly's horse had not disturbed.  From
time to time she struck the myrtle hedge beside her with the head
of a large flower which hung by its stalk from her listless hands,
or held it to her face as if to inhale its perfume.  Dismissing his
orderly by a side path, he rode gently forward, but, to his
surprise, without turning, or seeming to be aware of his presence,
she quickened her pace, and even appeared to look from side to side
for some avenue of escape.  If only to mend matters, he was obliged
to ride quickly forward to her side, where he threw himself from
his horse, flung the reins on his arm, and began to walk beside
her.  She at first turned a slightly flushed cheek away from him,
and then looked up with a purely simulated start of surprise.

"I am afraid," he said gently, "that I am the first to break my own
orders in regard to any intrusion on your privacy.  But I wanted to
ask you if I could give you any aid whatever in the change you
think of making."

He was quite sincere,--had been touched by her manifest disturbance,
and, despite his masculine relentlessness of criticism, he had an
intuition of feminine suffering that was in itself feminine.

"Meaning, that you are in a hurry to get rid of me," she said
curtly, without raising her eyes.

"Meaning that I only wish to expedite a business which I think is
unpleasant to you, but which I believe you have undertaken from
unselfish devotion."

The scant expression of a reserved nature is sometimes more
attractive to women than the most fluent vivacity.  Possibly there
was also a melancholy grace in this sardonic soldier's manner that
affected her, for she looked up, and said impulsively,--

"You think so?"

But he met her eager eyes with some surprise.

"I certainly do," he replied more coldly.  "I can imagine your
feelings on finding your uncle's home in the possession of your
enemies, and your presence under the family roof only a sufferance.
I can hardly believe it a pleasure to you, or a task you would have
accepted for yourself alone."

"But," she said, turning towards him wickedly, "what if I did it
only to excite my revenge; what if I knew it would give me courage
to incite my people to carry war into your own homes; to make you
of the North feel as I feel, and taste our bitterness?"

"I could easily understand that, too," he returned, with listless
coldness, "although I don't admit that revenge is an unmixed
pleasure, even to a woman."

"A woman!" she repeated indignantly.  "There is no sex in a war
like this."

"You are spoiling your flower," he said quietly.  "It is very
pretty, and a native one, too; not an invader, or even transplanted.
May I look at it?"

She hesitated, half recoiling for an instant, and her hand
trembled.  Then, suddenly and abruptly she said, with a hysteric
little laugh, "Take it, then," and almost thrust it in his hand.

It certainly was a pretty flower, not unlike a lily in appearance,
with a bell-like cup and long anthers covered with a fine pollen,
like red dust.  As he lifted it to his face, to inhale its perfume,
she uttered a slight cry, and snatched it from his hand.

"There!" she said, with the same nervous laugh.  "I knew you would;
I ought to have warned you.  The pollen comes off so easily, and
leaves a stain.  And you've got some on your cheek.  Look!" she
continued, taking her handkerchief from her pocket and wiping his
cheek; "see there!"  The delicate cambric showed a blood-red
streak.

"It grows in a swamp," she continued, in the same excited strain;
"we call it dragon's teeth,--like the kind that was sown in the
story, you know.  We children used to find it, and then paint our
faces and lips with it.  We called it our rouge.  I was almost
tempted to try it again when I found it just now.  It took me back
so to the old times."

Following her odd manner rather than her words, as she turned her
face towards him suddenly, Brant was inclined to think that she had
tried it already, so scarlet was her cheek.  But it presently paled
again under his cold scrutiny.

"You must miss the old times," he said calmly.  "I am afraid you
found very little of them left, except in these flowers."

"And hardly these," she said bitterly.  "Your troops had found a
way through the marsh, and had trampled down the bushes."

Brant's brow clouded.  He remembered that the brook, which had run
red during the fight, had lost itself in this marsh.  It did not
increase his liking for this beautiful but blindly vicious animal
at his side, and even his momentary pity for her was fading fast.
She was incorrigible.  They walked on for a few moments in silence.

"You said," she began at last, in a gentler and even hesitating
voice, "that your wife was a Southern woman."

He checked an irritated start with difficulty.

"I believe I did," he said coldly, as if he regretted it.

"And of course you taught her YOUR gospel,--the gospel according to
St. Lincoln.  Oh, I know," she went on hurriedly, as if conscious
of his irritation and seeking to allay it.  "She was a woman and
loved you, and thought with your thoughts and saw only with your
eyes.  Yes, that's the way with us,--I suppose we all do it!" she
added bitterly.

"She had her own opinions," said Brant briefly, as he recovered
himself.

Nevertheless, his manner so decidedly closed all further discussion
that there was nothing left for the young girl but silence.  But it
was broken by her in a few moments in her old contemptuous voice
and manner.

"Pray don't trouble yourself to accompany me any further, General
Brant.  Unless, of course, you are afraid I may come across some of
your--your soldiers.  I promise you I won't eat them."

"I am afraid you must suffer my company a little longer, Miss
Faulkner, on account of those same soldiers," returned Brant
gravely.  "You may not know that this road, in which I find you,
takes you through a cordon of pickets.  If you were alone you would
be stopped, questioned, and, failing to give the password, you
would be detained, sent to the guard-house, and"--he stopped, and
fixed his eyes on her keenly as he added, "and searched."

"You would not dare to search a woman!" she said indignantly,
although her flush gave way to a slight pallor.

"You said just now that there should be no sex in a war like this,"
returned Brant carelessly, but without abating his scrutinizing
gaze.

"Then it IS war?" she said quickly, with a white, significant face.

His look of scrutiny turned to one of puzzled wonder.  But at the
same moment there was the flash of a bayonet in the hedge, a voice
called "Halt!" and a soldier stepped into the road.

General Brant advanced, met the salute of the picket with a few
formal words, and then turned towards his fair companion, as
another soldier and a sergeant joined the group.

"Miss Faulkner is new to the camp, took the wrong turning, and was
unwittingly leaving the lines when I joined her."  He fixed his
eyes intently on her now colorless face, but she did not return his
look.  "You will show her the shortest way to quarters," he
continued, to the sergeant, "and should she at any time again lose
her way, you will again conduct her home,--but without detaining or
reporting her."

He lifted his cap, remounted his horse, and rode away, as the young
girl, with a proud, indifferent step, moved down the road with the
sergeant.  A mounted officer passed him and saluted,--it was one of
his own staff.  From some strange instinct, he knew that he had
witnessed the scene, and from some equally strange intuition he was
annoyed by it.  But he continued his way, visiting one or two
outposts, and returned by a long detour to his quarters.  As he
stepped upon the veranda he saw Miss Faulkner at the bottom of the
garden talking with some one across the hedge.  By the aid of his
glass he could recognize the shapely figure of the mulatto woman
which he had seen before.  But by its aid he also discovered that
she was carrying a flower exactly like the one which Miss Faulkner
still held in her hand.  Had she been with Miss Faulkner in the
lane, and if so, why had she disappeared when he came up?  Impelled
by something stronger than mere curiosity, he walked quickly down
the garden, but she evidently had noticed him, for she as quickly
disappeared.  Not caring to meet Miss Faulkner again, he retraced
his steps, resolving that he would, on the first opportunity,
personally examine and interrogate this new visitor.  For if she
were to take Miss Faulkner's place in a subordinate capacity, this
precaution was clearly within his rights.

He re-entered his room and seated himself at his desk before the
dispatches, orders, and reports awaiting him.  He found himself,
however, working half mechanically, and recurring to his late
interview with Miss Faulkner in the lane.  If she had any
inclination to act the spy, or to use her position here as a means
of communicating with the enemy's lines, he thought he had
thoroughly frightened her.  Nevertheless, now, for the first time,
he was inclined to accept his chief's opinion of her.  She was not
only too clumsy and inexperienced, but she totally lacked the self-
restraint of a spy.  Her nervous agitation in the lane was due to
something more disturbing than his mere possible intrusion upon her
confidences with the mulatto.  The significance of her question,
"Then it IS war?" was at best a threat, and that implied hesitation.
He recalled her strange allusion to his wife; was it merely the
outcome of his own foolish confession on their first interview, or
was it a concealed ironical taunt?  Being satisfied, however, that
she was not likely to imperil his public duty in any way, he was
angry with himself for speculating further.  But, although he still
felt towards her the same antagonism she had at first provoked, he
was conscious that she was beginning to exercise a strange
fascination over him.

Dismissing her at last with an effort, he finished his work and
then rose, and unlocking a closet, took out a small dispatch-box,
to which he intended to intrust a few more important orders and
memoranda.  As he opened it with a key on his watch-chain, he was
struck with a faint perfume that seemed to come from it,--a perfume
that he remembered.  Was it the smell of the flower that Miss
Faulkner carried, or the scent of the handkerchief with which she
had wiped his cheek, or a mingling of both?  Or was he under some
spell to think of that wretched girl, and her witch-like flower?
He leaned over the box and suddenly started.  Upon the outer
covering of a dispatch was a singular blood-red streak!  He examined
it closely,--it was the powdery stain of the lily pollen,--exactly
as he had seen it on her handkerchief.

There could be no mistake.  He passed his finger over the stain; he
could still feel the slippery, infinitesimal powder of the pollen.
It was not there when he had closed the box that morning; it was
impossible that it should be there unless the box had been opened
in his absence.  He re-examined the contents of the box; the papers
were all there.  More than that, they were papers of no importance
except to him personally; contained no plans nor key to any
military secret; he had been far too wise to intrust any to the
accidents of this alien house.  The prying intruder, whoever it
was, had gained nothing!  But there was unmistakably the attempt!
And the existence of a would-be spy within the purlieus of the
house was equally clear.

He called an officer from the next room.

"Has any one been here since my absence?"

"No, General."

"Has any one passed through the hall?"

He had fully anticipated the answer, as the subaltern replied,
"Only the women servants."

He re-entered the room.  Closing the door, he again carefully
examined the box, his table, the papers upon it, the chair before
it, and even the Chinese matting on the floor, for any further
indication of the pollen.  It hardly seemed possible that any one
could have entered the room with the flower in their hand without
scattering some of the tell-tale dust elsewhere; it was too large a
flower to be worn on the breast or in the hair.  Again, no one
would have dared to linger there long enough to have made an
examination of the box, with an officer in the next room, and the
sergeant passing.  The box had been removed, and the examination
made elsewhere!

An idea seized him.  Miss Faulkner was still absent, the mulatto
had apparently gone home.  He quickly mounted the staircase, but
instead of entering his room, turned suddenly aside into the wing
which had been reserved.  The first door yielded as he turned its
knob gently and entered a room which he at once recognized as the
"young lady's boudoir."  But the dusty and draped furniture had
been rearranged and uncovered, and the apartment bore every sign of
present use.  Yet, although there was unmistakable evidence of its
being used by a person of taste and refinement, he was surprised to
see that the garments hanging in an open press were such as were
used by negro servants, and that a gaudy handkerchief such as
housemaids used for turbans was lying on the pretty silk coverlet.
He did not linger over these details, but cast a rapid glance round
the room.  Then his eyes became fixed on a fanciful writing-desk,
which stood by the window.  For, in a handsome vase placed on its
level top, and drooping on a portfolio below, hung a cluster of the
very flowers that Miss Faulkner had carried!



CHAPTER IV.


It seemed plain to Brant that the dispatch-box had been conveyed
here and opened for security on this desk, and in the hurry of
examining the papers the flower had been jostled and the fallen
grains of pollen overlooked by the spy.  There were one or two
freckles of red on the desk, which made this accident appear the
more probable.  But he was equally struck by another circumstance.
The desk stood immediately before the window.  As he glanced
mechanically from it, he was surprised to see that it commanded an
extensive view of the slope below the eminence on which the house
stood, even beyond his furthest line of pickets.  The vase of
flowers, each of which was nearly as large as a magnolia blossom,
and striking in color, occupied a central position before it, and
no doubt could be quite distinctly seen from a distance.  From this
circumstance he could not resist the strong impression that this
fateful and extraordinary blossom, carried by Miss Faulkner and the
mulatto, and so strikingly "in evidence" at the window, was in some
way a signal.  Obeying an impulse which he was conscious had a half
superstitious foundation, he carefully lifted the vase from its
position before the window, and placed it on a side table.  Then he
cautiously slipped from the room.

But he could not easily shake off the perplexity which the
occurrence had caused, although he was satisfied that it was
fraught with no military or strategic danger to his command, and
that the unknown spy had obtained no information whatever.  Yet he
was forced to admit to himself that he was more concerned in his
attempts to justify the conduct of Miss Faulkner with this later
revelation.  It was quite possible that the dispatch-box had been
purloined by some one else during her absence from the house, as
the presence of the mulatto servant in his room would have been
less suspicious than hers.  There was really little evidence to
connect Miss Faulkner with the actual outrage,--rather might not
the real spy have taken advantage of her visit here, to throw
suspicion upon her?  He remembered her singular manner,--the
strange inconsistency with which she had forced this flower upon
him.  She would hardly have done so had she been conscious of its
having so serious an import.  Yet, what was the secret of her
manifest agitation?  A sudden inspiration flashed across his mind;
a smile came upon his lips.  She was in love!  The enemy's line
contained some sighing Strephon of a young subaltern with whom she
was in communication, and for whom she had undertaken this quest.
The flower was their language of correspondence, no doubt.  It
explained also the young girl's animosity against the younger
officers,--his adversaries; against himself,--their commander.  He
had previously wondered why, if she were indeed a spy, she had not
chosen, upon some equally specious order from Washington, the
headquarters of the division commander, whose secrets were more
valuable.  This was explained by the fact that she was nearer the
lines and her lover in her present abode.  He had no idea that he
was making excuses for her,--he believed himself only just.  The
recollection of what she had said of the power of love, albeit it
had hurt him cruelly at the time, was now clearer to him, and even
seemed to mitigate her offense.  She would be here but a day or two
longer; he could afford to wait without interrogating her.

But as to the real intruder, spy or thief,--that was another
affair, and quickly settled.  He gave an order to the officer of
the day peremptorily forbidding the entrance of alien servants or
slaves within the precincts of the headquarters.  Any one thus
trespassing was to be brought before him.  The officer looked
surprised, he even fancied disappointed.  The graces of the mulatto
woman's figure had evidently not been thrown away upon his
subalterns.

An hour or two later, when he was mounting his horse for a round of
inspection, he was surprised to see Miss Faulkner, accompanied by
the mulatto woman, running hurriedly to the house.  He had
forgotten his late order until he saw the latter halted by the
sentries, but the young girl came flying on, regardless of her
companion.  Her skirt was held in one hand, her straw hat had
fallen back in her flight, and was caught only by a ribbon around
her swelling throat, and her loosened hair lay in a black rippled
loop on one shoulder.  For an instant Brant thought that she was
seeking him in indignation at his order, but a second look at her
set face, eager eyes, and parted scarlet lips, showed him that she
had not even noticed him in the concentration of her purpose.  She
swept by him into the hall, he heard the swish of her skirt and
rapid feet on the stairs,--she was gone.  What had happened, or was
this another of her moods?

But he was called to himself by the apparition of a corporal
standing before him, with the mulatto woman,--the first capture
under his order.  She was tall, well-formed, but unmistakably
showing the negro type, even in her small features.  Her black eyes
were excited, but unintelligent; her manner dogged, but with the
obstinacy of half-conscious stupidity.  Brant felt not only
disappointed, but had a singular impression that she was not the
same woman that he had first seen.  Yet there was the tall,
graceful figure, the dark profile, and the turbaned head that he
had once followed down the passage by his room.

Her story was as stupidly simple.  She had known "Missy" from a
chile!  She had just traipsed over to see her that afternoon; they
were walking together when the sojers stopped her.  She had never
been stopped before, even by "the patter rollers."*  Her old massa
(Manly) had gib leaf to go see Miss Tilly, and hadn't said nuffin
about no "orders."


* i. e., patrols,--a civic home-guard in the South that kept
surveillance of slaves.


More annoyed than he cared to confess, Brant briefly dismissed her
with a warning.  As he cantered down the slope the view of the
distant pickets recalled the window in the wing, and he turned in
his saddle to look at it.  There it was--the largest and most
dominant window in that part of the building--and within it, a
distinct and vivid object almost filling the opening, was the vase
of flowers, which he had a few hours ago removed, RESTORED TO
ITS ORIGINAL POSITION!  He smiled.  The hurried entrance and
consternation of Miss Faulkner were now fully explained.  He had
interrupted some impassioned message, perhaps even countermanded
some affectionate rendezvous beyond the lines.  And it seemed to
settle the fact that it was she who had done the signaling!  But
would not this also make her cognizant of the taking of the
dispatch-box?  He reflected, however, that the room was apparently
occupied by the mulatto woman--he remembered the calico dresses and
turban on the bed--and it was possible that Miss Faulkner had only
visited it for the purpose of signaling to her lover.  Although
this circumstance did not tend to make his mind easier, it was,
however, presently diverted by a new arrival and a strange
recognition.

As he rode through the camp a group of officers congregated before
a large mess tent appeared to be highly amused by the conversation--
half monologue and half harangue of a singular-looking individual
who stood in the centre.  He wore a "slouch" hat, to the band of
which he had imparted a military air by the addition of a gold
cord, but the brim was caught up at the side in a peculiarly
theatrical and highly artificial fashion.  A heavy cavalry sabre
depended from a broad-buckled belt under his black frock coat, with
the addition of two revolvers--minus their holsters--stuck on
either side of the buckle, after the style of a stage smuggler.  A
pair of long enameled leather riding boots, with the tops turned
deeply over, as if they had once done duty for the representative
of a cavalier, completed his extraordinary equipment.  The group
were so absorbed in him that they did not perceive the approach of
their chief and his orderly; and Brant, with a sign to the latter,
halted only a few paces from this central figure.  His speech was a
singular mingling of high-flown and exalted epithets, with inexact
pronunciation and occasional lapses of Western slang.

"Well, I ain't purtendin' to any stratutegical smartness, and I
didn't gradooate at West Point as one of those Apocryphal
Engineers; I don't do much talking about 'flank' movements or
'recognizances in force' or 'Ekellon skirmishing,' but when it
comes down to square Ingin fightin', I reckon I kin have my say.
There are men who don't know the Army Contractor," he added darkly,
"who mebbe have heard of 'Red Jim.'  I don't mention names,
gentlemen, but only the other day a man that you all know says to
me, 'If I only knew what you do about scoutin' I wouldn't be
wanting for information as I do.'  I ain't goin' to say who it was,
or break any confidences between gentlemen by saying how many stars
he had on his shoulder strap; but he was a man who knew what he was
saying.  And I say agin, gentlemen, that the curse of the Northern
Army is the want of proper scoutin'.  What was it caused Bull's
Run?--Want o' scoutin'.  What was it rolled up Pope?--Want o'
scoutin'.  What caused the slaughter at the Wilderness?--Want o'
scoutin'--Ingin scoutin'!  Why, only the other day, gentlemen, I
was approached to know what I'd take to organize a scoutin' force.
And what did I say?--'No, General; it ain't because I represent one
of the largest Army Beef Contracts in this country,' says I.  'It
ain't because I belong, so to speak, to the "Sinews of War;" but
because I'd want about ten thousand trained Ingins from the
Reservations!'  And the regular West Point, high-toned, scientific
inkybus that weighs so heavily on our army don't see it--and won't
have it!  Then Sherman, he sez to me"--

But here a roar of laughter interrupted him, and in the cross fire
of sarcastic interrogations that began Brant saw, with relief, a
chance of escape.  For in the voice, manner, and, above all, the
characteristic temperament of the stranger, he had recognized his
old playmate and the husband of Susy,--the redoubtable Jim Hooker!
There was no mistaking that gloomy audacity; that mysterious
significance; that magnificent lying.  But even at that moment
Clarence Brant's heart had gone out, with all his old loyalty of
feeling, towards his old companion.  He knew that a public
recognition of him then and there would plunge Hooker into
confusion; he felt keenly the ironical plaudits and laughter of his
officers over the manifest weakness and vanity of the ex-teamster,
ex-rancher, ex-actor, and husband of his old girl sweetheart, and
would have spared him the knowledge that he had overheard it.
Turning hastily to the orderly, he bade him bring the stranger to
his headquarters, and rode away unperceived.

He had heard enough, however, to account for his presence there,
and the singular chance that had brought them again together.  He
was evidently one of those large civil contractors of supplies whom
the Government was obliged to employ, who visited the camp half
officially, and whom the army alternately depended upon and abused.
Brant had dealt with his underlings in the Commissariat, and even
now remembered that he had heard he was coming, but had overlooked
the significance of his name.  But how he came to leave his
theatrical profession, how he had attained a position which implied
a command of considerable capital--for many of the contractors had
already amassed large fortunes--and what had become of Susy and her
ambitions in this radical change of circumstances, were things
still to be learned.  In his own changed conditions he had seldom
thought of her; it was with a strange feeling of irritation and
half responsibility that he now recalled their last interview and
the emotion to which he had yielded.

He had not long to wait.  He had scarcely regained the quarters at
his own private office before he heard the step of the orderly upon
the veranda and the trailing clank of Hooker's sabre.  He did not
know, however, that Hooker, without recognizing his name, had
received the message as a personal tribute, and had left his
sarcastic companions triumphantly, with the air of going to a
confidential interview, to which his well-known military criticism
had entitled him.  It was with a bearing of gloomy importance and
his characteristic, sullen, sidelong glance that he entered the
apartment and did not look up until Brant had signaled the orderly
to withdraw, and closed the door behind him.  And then he recognized
his old boyish companion--the preferred favorite of fortune!

For a moment he gasped with astonishment.  For a moment gloomy
incredulity, suspicion, delight, pride, admiration, even affection,
struggled for mastery in his sullen, staring eyes and open,
twitching mouth.  For here was Clarence Brant, handsomer than ever,
more superior than ever, in the majesty of uniform and authority
which fitted him--the younger man--by reason of his four years of
active service, with the careless ease and bearing of the veteran!
Here was the hero whose name was already so famous that the mere
coincidence of it with that of the modest civilian he had known
would have struck him as preposterous.  Yet here he was--supreme,
and dazzling--surrounded by the pomp and circumstance of war--into
whose reserved presence he, Jim Hooker, had been ushered with the
formality of challenge, saluting, and presented bayonets!

Luckily, Brant had taken advantage of his first gratified
ejaculation to shake him warmly by the hand, and then, with both
hands laid familiarly on his shoulder, force him down into a chair.
Luckily, for by that time Jim Hooker had, with characteristic
gloominess, found time to taste the pangs of envy--an envy the more
keen since, in spite of his success as a peaceful contractor, he
had always secretly longed for military display and distinction.
He looked at the man who had achieved it, as he firmly believed, by
sheer luck and accident, and his eyes darkened.  Then, with
characteristic weakness and vanity, he began to resist his first
impressions of Clarence's superiority, and to air his own
importance.  He leaned heavily back in the chair in which he had
been thus genially forced, drew off his gauntlet and attempted to
thrust it through his belt, as he had seen Brant do, but failed on
account of his pistols already occupying that position, dropped it,
got his sword between his legs in attempting to pick it up, and
then leaned back again, with half-closed eyes serenely indifferent
of his old companion's smiling face.

"I reckon," he began slowly, with a slightly patronizing air, "that
we'd have met, sooner or later, at Washington, or at Grant's
headquarters, for Hooker, Meacham & Co. go everywhere, and are
about as well known as major-generals, to say nothin'," he went on,
with a sidelong glance at Brant's shoulder-straps, "of brigadiers;
and it's rather strange--only, of course, you're kind of fresh in
the service--that you ain't heard of me afore."

"But I'm very glad to hear of you now, Jim," said Brant, smiling,
"and from your own lips--which I am also delighted to find," he
added mischievously, "are still as frankly communicative on that
topic as of old.  But I congratulate you, old fellow, on your good
fortune.  When did you leave the stage?"

Mr. Hooker frowned slightly.

"I never was really on the stage, you know," he said, waving his
hand with assumed negligence.  "Only went on to please my wife.
Mrs. Hooker wouldn't act with vulgar professionals, don't you see!
I was really manager most of the time, and lessee of the theatre.
Went East when the war broke out, to offer my sword and knowledge
of Ingin fightin' to Uncle Sam!  Drifted into a big pork contract
at St. Louis, with Fremont.  Been at it ever since.  Offered a
commission in the reg'lar service lots o' times.  Refused."

"Why?" asked Brant demurely.

"Too much West Point starch around to suit ME," returned Hooker
darkly.  "And too many spies!"

"Spies?" echoed Brant abstractedly, with a momentary reminiscence
of Miss Faulkner.

"Yes, spies," continued Hooker, with dogged mystery.  "One half of
Washington is watching t'other half, and, from the President's wife
down, most of the women are secesh!"

Brant suddenly fixed his keen eyes on his guest.  But the next
moment he reflected that this was only Jim Hooker's usual speech,
and possessed no ulterior significance.  He smiled again, and said,
more gently,--

"And how is Mrs. Hooker?"

Mr. Hooker fixed his eyes on the ceiling, rose, and pretended to
look out of the window; then, taking his seat again by the table,
as if fronting an imaginary audience, and pulling slowly at his
gauntlets after the usual theatrical indication of perfect
sangfroid, said,--

"There ain't any!"

"Good heavens!" said Brant, with genuine emotion.  "I beg your
pardon.  Really, I"--

"Mrs. Hooker and me are divorced," continued Hooker, slightly
changing his attitude, and leaning heavily on his sabre, with his
eyes still on his fanciful audience.  "There was, you understand"--
lightly tossing his gauntlet aside--"incompatibility of temper--
and--we--parted!  Ha!"

He uttered a low, bitter, scornful laugh, which, however, produced
the distinct impression in Brant's mind that up to that moment he
had never had the slightest feeling in the matter whatever.

"You seemed to be on such good terms with each other!" murmured
Brant vaguely.

"Seemed!" said Hooker bitterly, glancing sardonically at an ideal
second row in the pit before him, "yes--seemed!  There were other
differences, social and political.  You understand that; you have
suffered, too."  He reached out his hand and pressed Brant's, in
heavy effusiveness.  "But," he continued haughtily, lightly tossing
his glove again, "we are also men of the world; we let that pass."

And it was possible that he found the strain of his present
attitude too great, for he changed to an easier position.

"But," said Brant curiously, "I always thought that Mrs. Hooker was
intensely Union and Northern?"

"Put on!" said Hooker, in his natural voice.

"But you remember the incident of the flag?" persisted Brant.

"Mrs. Hooker was always an actress," said Hooker significantly.
"But," he added cheerfully, "Mrs. Hooker is now the wife of Senator
Boompointer, one of the wealthiest and most powerful Republicans in
Washington--carries the patronage of the whole West in his vest
pocket."

"Yet, if she is not a Republican, why did she"--began Brant.

"For a purpose," replied Hooker darkly.  "But," he added again,
with greater cheerfulness, "she belongs to the very elite of
Washington society.  Goes to all the foreign ambassadors' balls,
and is a power at the White House.  Her picture is in all the
first-class illustrated papers."

The singular but unmistakable pride of the man in the importance of
the wife from whom he was divorced, and for whom he did not care,
would have offended Brant's delicacy, or at least have excited his
ridicule, but for the reason that he was more deeply stung by
Hooker's allusion to his own wife and his degrading similitude of
their two conditions.  But he dismissed the former as part of
Hooker's invincible and still boyish extravagance, and the latter
as part of his equally characteristic assumption.  Perhaps he was
conscious, too, notwithstanding the lapse of years and the
condonation of separation and forgetfulness, that he deserved
little delicacy from the hands of Susy's husband.  Nevertheless, he
dreaded to hear him speak again of her; and the fear was realized
in a question.

"Does she know you are here?"

"Who?" said Brant curtly.

"Your wife.  That is--I reckon she's your wife still, eh?"

"Yes; but I do not know what she knows," returned Brant quietly.
He had regained his self-composure.

"Susy,--Mrs. Senator Boompointer, that is,"--said Hooker, with an
apparent dignity in his late wife's new title, "allowed that she'd
gone abroad on a secret mission from the Southern Confederacy to
them crowned heads over there.  She was good at ropin' men in, you
know.  Anyhow, Susy, afore she was Mrs. Boompointer, was dead set
on findin' out where she was, but never could.  She seemed to drop
out of sight a year ago.  Some said one thing, and some said
another.  But you can bet your bottom dollar that Mrs. Senator
Boompointer, who knows how to pull all the wires in Washington,
will know, if any one does."

"But is Mrs. Boompointer really disaffected, and a Southern
sympathizer?" said Brant, "or is it only caprice or fashion?"

While speaking he had risen, with a half-abstracted face, and had
gone to the window, where he stood in a listening attitude.
Presently he opened the window, and stepped outside.  Hooker
wonderingly followed him.  One or two officers had already stepped
out of their rooms, and were standing upon the veranda; another had
halted in the path.  Then one quickly re-entered the house,
reappeared with his cap and sword in his hand, and ran lightly
toward the guard-house.  A slight crackling noise seemed to come
from beyond the garden wall.

"What's up?" said Hooker, with staring eyes.

"Picket firing!"

The crackling suddenly became a long rattle.  Brant re-entered the
room, and picked up his hat.

"You'll excuse me for a few moments."

A faint sound, soft yet full, and not unlike a bursting bubble,
made the house appear to leap elastically, like the rebound of a
rubber ball.

"What's that?" gasped Hooker.

"Cannon, out of range!"



CHAPTER V.


In another instant bugles were ringing through the camp, with the
hurrying hoofs of mounted officers and the trampling of forming
men.  The house itself was almost deserted.  Although the single
cannon-shot had been enough to show that it was no mere skirmishing
of pickets, Brant still did not believe in any serious attack of
the enemy.  His position, as in the previous engagement, had no
strategic importance to them; they were no doubt only making a
feint against it to conceal some advance upon the centre of the
army two miles away.  Satisfied that he was in easy supporting
distance of his division commander, he extended his line along the
ridge, ready to fall back in that direction, while retarding their
advance and masking the position of his own chief.  He gave a few
orders necessary to the probable abandonment of the house, and then
returned to it.  Shot and shell were already dropping in the field
below.  A thin ridge of blue haze showed the line of skirmish fire.
A small conical, white cloud, like a bursting cotton-pod, revealed
an open battery in the willow-fringed meadow.  Yet the pastoral
peacefulness of the house was unchanged.  The afternoon sun lay
softly on its deep verandas; the pot pourri incense of fallen rose-
leaves haunted it still.

He entered his room through the French window on the veranda, when
the door leading from the passage was suddenly flung open, and Miss
Faulkner swept quickly inside, closed the door behind her, and
leaned back against it, panting and breathless.

Clarence was startled, and for a moment ashamed.  He had suddenly
realized that in the excitement he had entirely forgotten her and
the dangers to which she might be exposed.  She had probably heard
the firing, her womanly fears had been awakened; she had come to
him for protection.  But as he turned towards her with a reassuring
smile, he was shocked to see that her agitation and pallor were far
beyond any physical cause.  She motioned him desperately to shut
the window by which he had entered, and said, with white lips,--

"I must speak with you alone!"

"Certainly.  But there is no immediate danger to you even here--and
I can soon put you beyond the reach of any possible harm."

"Harm--to me!  God! if it were only that!"

He stared at her uneasily.

"Listen," she said gaspingly, "listen to me!  Then hate, despise
me--kill me if you will.  For you are betrayed and ruined--cut off
and surrounded!  It has been helped on by me, but I swear to you
the blow did not come from MY hand.  I would have saved you.  God
only knows how it happened--it was Fate!"

In an instant Brant saw the whole truth instinctively and clearly.
But with the revelation came the usual calmness and perfect self-
possession which never yet had failed him in any emergency.  With
the sound of the increasing cannonade and its shifting position
made clearer to his ears, the view of his whole threatened position
spread out like a map before his eyes, the swift calculation of the
time his men could hold the ridge in his mind--even a hurried
estimate of the precious moments he could give to the wretched
woman before him--he even then, gravely and gently, led her to a
chair and said in a calm voice,--

"That is not enough!  Speak slowly, plainly.  I must know
everything.  How and in what way have you betrayed me?"

She looked at him imploringly--reassured, yet awed by his
gentleness.

"You won't believe me; you cannot believe me! for I do not even
know.  I have taken and exchanged letters--whose contents I never
saw--between the Confederates and a spy who comes to this house,
but who is far away by this time.  I did it because I thought you
hated and despised me because I thought it was my duty to help my
cause--because you said it was 'war' between us--but I never spied
on you.  I swear it."

"Then how do you know of this attack?" he said calmly.

She brightened, half timidly, half hopefully.

"There is a window in the wing of this house that overlooks the
slope near the Confederate lines.  There was a signal placed in it--
not by me--but I know it meant that as long as it was there the
plot, whatever it was, was not ripe, and that no attack would be
made on you as long as it was visible.  That much I know,--that
much the spy had to tell me, for we both had to guard that room in
turns.  I wanted to keep this dreadful thing off--until"--her voice
trembled, "until," she added hurriedly, seeing his calm eyes were
reading her very soul, "until I went away--and for that purpose I
withheld some of the letters that were given me.  But this morning,
while I was away from the house, I looked back and saw that the
signal was no longer there.  Some one had changed it.  I ran back,
but I was too late--God help me!--as you see."

The truth flashed upon Brant.  It was his own hand that had
precipitated the attack.  But a larger truth came to him now, like
a dazzling inspiration.  If he had thus precipitated the attack
before they were ready, there was a chance that it was imperfect,
and there was still hope.  But there was no trace of this visible
in his face as he fixed his eyes calmly on hers, although his
pulses were halting in expectancy as he said--

"Then the spy had suspected you, and changed it."

"Oh, no," she said eagerly, "for the spy was with me and was
frightened too.  We both ran back together--you remember--she was
stopped by the patrol!"

She checked herself suddenly, but too late.  Her cheeks blazed, her
head sank, with the foolish identification of the spy into which
her eagerness had betrayed her.

But Brant appeared not to notice it.  He was, in fact, puzzling his
brain to conceive what information the stupid mulatto woman could
have obtained here.  His strength, his position was no secret to
the enemy--there was nothing to gain from him.  She must have been,
like the trembling, eager woman before him, a mere tool of others.

"Did this woman live here?" he said.

"No," she said.  "She lived with the Manlys, but had friends whom
she visited at your general's headquarters."

With difficulty Brant suppressed a start.  It was clear to him now.
The information had been obtained at the division headquarters, and
passed through his camp as being nearest the Confederate lines.
But what was the information--and what movement had he precipitated?
It was clear that this woman did not know.  He looked at her keenly.
A sudden explosion shook the house,--a drift of smoke passed the
window,--a shell had burst in the garden.

She had been gazing at him despairingly, wistfully--but did not
blanch or start.

An idea took possession of him.  He approached her, and took her
cold hand.  A half-smile parted her pale lips.

"You have courage--you have devotion," he said gravely.  "I believe
you regret the step you have taken.  If you could undo what you
have done, even at peril to yourself, dare you do it?"

"Yes," she said breathlessly.

"You are known to the enemy.  If I am surrounded, you could pass
through their lines unquestioned?"

"Yes," she said eagerly.

"A note from me would pass you again through the pickets of our
headquarters.  But you would bear a note to the general that no
eyes but his must see.  It would not implicate you or yours; would
only be a word of warning."

"And you," she said quickly, "would be saved!  They would come to
your assistance!  You would not then be taken?"

He smiled gently.

"Perhaps--who knows!"

He sat down and wrote hurriedly.

"This," he said, handing her a slip of paper, "is a pass.  You will
use it beyond your own lines.  This note," he continued, handing
her a sealed envelope, "is for the general.  No one else must see
it or know of it--not even your lover, should you meet him!"

"My lover!" she said indignantly, with a flash of her old savagery;
"what do you mean?  I have no lover!"

Brant glanced at her flushed face.

"I thought," he said quietly, "that there was some one you cared
for in yonder lines--some one you wrote to.  It would have been an
excuse"--

He stopped, as her face paled again, and her hands dropped heavily
at her side.

"Good God!--you thought that, too!  You thought that I would
sacrifice you for another man!"

"Pardon me," said Brant quickly.  "I was foolish.  But whether your
lover is a man or a cause, you have shown a woman's devotion.  And,
in repairing your fault, you are showing more than a woman's
courage now."

To his surprise, the color had again mounted her pretty cheeks, and
even a flash of mischief shone in her blue eyes.

"It would have been an excuse," she murmured, "yes--to save a man,
surely!"  Then she said quickly, "I will go.  At once!  I am
ready!"

"One moment," he said gravely.  "Although this pass and an escort
insure your probable safe conduct, this is 'war' and danger!  You
are still a spy!  Are you ready to go?"

"I am," she said proudly, tossing back a braid of her fallen hair.
Yet a moment after she hesitated.  Then she said, in a lower voice,
"Are you ready to forgive?"

"In either case," he said, touched by her manner; "and God speed
you!"

He extended his hand, and left a slight pressure on her cold
fingers.  But they slipped quickly from his grasp, and she turned
away with a heightened color.

He stepped to the door.  One or two aides-de-camp, withheld by his
order against intrusion, were waiting eagerly with reports.  The
horse of a mounted field officer was pawing the garden turf.  The
officers stared at the young girl.

"Take Miss Faulkner, with a flag, to some safe point of the enemy's
line.  She is a non-combatant of their own, and will receive their
protection."

He had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with the aides-de-camp
before the field officer hurriedly entered.  Taking Brant aside, he
said quickly,--

"Pardon me, General; but there is a strong feeling among the men
that this attack is the result of some information obtained by the
enemy.  You must know that the woman you have just given a
safeguard to is suspected, and the men are indignant."

"The more reason why she should be conveyed beyond any consequences
of their folly, Major," said Brant frigidly, "and I look to you for
her safe convoy.  There is nothing in this attack to show that the
enemy has received any information regarding us.  But I would
suggest that it would be better to see that my orders are carried
out regarding the slaves and non-combatants who are passing our
lines from divisional headquarters, where valuable information may
be obtained, than in the surveillance of a testy and outspoken
girl."

An angry flush crossed the major's cheek as he saluted and fell
back, and Brant turned to the aide-de-camp.  The news was grave.
The column of the enemy was moving against the ridge--it was no
longer possible to hold it--and the brigade was cut off from its
communication with the divisional headquarters, although as yet no
combined movement was made against it.  Brant's secret fears that
it was an intended impact against the centre were confirmed.  Would
his communication to the divisional commander pass through the
attacking column in time?

Yet one thing puzzled him.  The enemy, after forcing his flank, had
shown no disposition, even with their overwhelming force, to turn
aside and crush him.  He could easily have fallen back, when it was
possible to hold the ridge no longer, without pursuit.  His other
flank and rear were not threatened, as they might have been, by the
division of so large an attacking column, which was moving steadily
on towards the ridge.  It was this fact that seemed to show a
failure or imperfection in the enemy's plan.  It was possible that
his precipitation of the attack by the changed signal had been the
cause of it.  Doubtless some provision had been made to attack him
in flank and rear, but in the unexpected hurry of the onset it had
to be abandoned.  He could still save himself, as his officers
knew; but his conviction that he might yet be able to support his
divisional commander by holding his position doggedly, but coolly
awaiting his opportunity, was strong.  More than that, it was his
temperament and instinct.

Harrying them in flank and rear, contesting the ground inch by
inch, and holding his own against the artillery sent to dislodge
him, or the outriding cavalry that, circling round, swept through
his open ranks, he saw his files melt away beside this steady
current without flinching.



CHAPTER VI.


Yet all along the fateful ridge--now obscured and confused with
thin crossing smoke-drifts from file-firing, like partly rubbed-out
slate-pencil marks; or else, when cleared of those drifts,
presenting only an indistinguishable map of zigzag lines of
straggling wagons and horses, unintelligible to any eye but his--
the singular magnetism of the chief was felt everywhere: whether it
was shown in the quick closing in of resistance to some sharper
onset of the enemy or the more dogged stand of inaction under fire,
his power was always dominant.  A word or two of comprehensive
direction sent through an aide-de-camp, or the sudden relief of his
dark, watchful, composed face uplifted above a line of bayonets,
never failed in their magic.  Like all born leaders, he seemed in
these emergencies to hold a charmed life--infecting his followers
with a like disbelief in death; men dropped to right and left of
him with serene assurance in their ghastly faces or a cry of life
and confidence in their last gasp.  Stragglers fell in and closed
up under his passing glance; a hopeless, inextricable wrangle
around an overturned caisson, at a turn of the road, resolved
itself into an orderly, quiet, deliberate clearing away of the
impediment before the significant waiting of that dark, silent
horseman.

Yet under this imperturbable mask he was keenly conscious of
everything; in that apparent concentration there was a sharpening
of all his senses and his impressibility: he saw the first trace of
doubt or alarm in the face of a subaltern to whom he was giving an
order; the first touch of sluggishness in a re-forming line; the
more significant clumsiness of a living evolution that he knew was
clogged by the dead bodies of comrades; the ominous silence of a
breastwork; the awful inertia of some rigidly kneeling files
beyond, which still kept their form but never would move again; the
melting away of skirmish points; the sudden gaps here and there;
the sickening incurving of what a moment before had been a straight
line--all these he saw in all their fatal significance.  But even
at this moment, coming upon a hasty barricade of overset commissary
wagons, he stopped to glance at a familiar figure he had seen but
an hour ago, who now seemed to be commanding a group of collected
stragglers and camp followers.  Mounted on a wheel, with a revolver
in each hand and a bowie knife between his teeth--theatrical even
in his paroxysm of undoubted courage--glared Jim Hooker.  And
Clarence Brant, with the whole responsibility of the field on his
shoulders, even at that desperate moment, found himself recalling a
vivid picture of the actor Hooker personating the character of "Red
Dick" in "Rosalie, the Prairie Flower," as he had seen him in a
California theatre five years before.

It wanted still an hour of the darkness that would probably close
the fight of that day.  Could he hold out, keeping his offensive
position so long?  A hasty council with his officers showed him
that the weakness of their position had already infected them.
They reminded him that his line of retreat was still open--that in
the course of the night the enemy, although still pressing towards
the division centre, might yet turn and outflank him--or that their
strangely delayed supports might come up before morning.  Brant's
glass, however, remained fixed on the main column, still pursuing
its way along the ridge.  It struck him suddenly, however, that the
steady current had stopped, spread out along the crest on both
sides, and was now at right angles with its previous course.  There
had been a check!  The next moment the thunder of guns along the
whole horizon, and the rising cloud of smoke, revealed a line of
battle.  The division centre was engaged.  The opportunity he had
longed for had come--the desperate chance to throw himself on their
rear and cut his way through to the division--but it had come too
late!  He looked at his shattered ranks--scarce a regiment remained.
Even as a demonstration, the attack would fail against the enemy's
superior numbers.  Nothing clearly was left to him now but to remain
where he was--within supporting distance, and await the issue of the
fight beyond.  He was putting up his glass, when the dull boom of
cannon in the extreme western limit of the horizon attracted his
attention.  By the still gleaming sky he could see a long gray line
stealing up from the valley from the distant rear of the headquarters
to join the main column.  They were the missing supports!  His heart
leaped.  He held the key of the mystery now.  The one imperfect
detail of the enemy's plan was before him.  The supports, coming
later from the west, had only seen the second signal from the
window--when Miss Faulkner had replaced the vase--and had avoided
his position.  It was impossible to limit the effect of this
blunder.  If the young girl who had thus saved him had reached the
division commander with his message in time, he might be forewarned,
and even profit by it.  His own position would be less precarious,
as the enemy, already engaged in front, would be unable to recover
their position in the rear and correct the blunder.  The bulk of
their column had already streamed past him.  If defeated, there was
always the danger that it might be rolled back upon him--but he
conjectured that the division commander would attempt to prevent the
junction of the supports with the main column by breaking between
them, crowding them from the ridge, and joining him.  As the last
stragglers of the rear guard swept by, Brant's bugles were already
recalling the skirmishers.  He redoubled his pickets, and resolved
to wait and watch.

And there was the more painful duty of looking after the wounded
and the dead.  The larger rooms of the headquarters had already
been used as a hospital.  Passing from cot to cot, recognizing in
the faces now drawn with agony, or staring in vacant unconsciousness,
the features that he had seen only a few hours before flushed with
enthusiasm and excitement, something of his old doubting, questioning
nature returned.  Was there no way but this? How far was HE--moving
among them unscathed and uninjured-- responsible?

And if not he--who then?  His mind went back bitterly to the old
days of the conspiracy--to the inception of that struggle which was
bearing such ghastly fruit.  He thought of his traitorous wife,
until he felt his cheeks tingle, and he was fain to avert his eyes
from those of his prostrate comrades, in a strange fear that, with
the clairvoyance of dying men, they should read his secret.

It was past midnight when, without undressing, he threw himself
upon his bed in the little convent-like cell to snatch a few
moments of sleep.  Its spotless, peaceful walls and draperies
affected him strangely, as if he had brought into its immaculate
serenity the sanguine stain of war.  He was awakened suddenly from
a deep slumber by an indefinite sense of alarm.  His first thought
was that he had been summoned to repel an attack.  He sat up and
listened; everything was silent except the measured tread of the
sentry on the gravel walk below.  But the door was open.  He sprang
to his feet and slipped into the gallery in time to see the tall
figure of a woman glide before the last moonlit window at its
farthest end.  He could not see her face--but the characteristic
turbaned head of the negro race was plainly visible.

He did not care to follow her or even to alarm the guard.  If it
were the spy or one of her emissaries, she was powerless now to do
any harm, and under his late orders and the rigorous vigilance of
his sentinels she could not leave the lines--or, indeed, the house.
She probably knew this as well as he did; it was, therefore, no
doubt only an accidental intrusion of one of the servants.  He
re-entered the room, and stood for a few moments by the window,
looking over the moonlit ridge.  The sounds of distant cannon had
long since ceased.  Wide awake, and refreshed by the keen morning
air, which alone of all created things seemed to have shaken the
burden of the dreadful yesterday from its dewy wings, he turned
away and lit a candle on the table.  As he was rebuckling his sword
belt he saw a piece of paper lying on the foot of the bed from
which he had just risen.  Taking it to the candle, he read in a
roughly scrawled hand:

"You are asleep when you should be on the march.  You have no time
to lose.  Before daybreak the supports of the column you have been
foolishly resisting will be upon you.--From one who would save YOU,
but hates your cause."

A smile of scorn passed his lips.  The handwriting was unknown and
evidently disguised.  The purport of the message had not alarmed
him; but suddenly a suspicion flashed upon him--that it came from
Miss Faulkner!  She had failed in her attempt to pass through the
enemy's lines--or she had never tried to.  She had deceived him--or
had thought better of her chivalrous impulse, and now sought to
mitigate her second treachery by this second warning.  And he had
let her messenger escape him!

He hurriedly descended the stairs.  The sound of voices was
approaching him.  He halted, and recognized the faces of the
brigade surgeon and one of his aides-de-camp.

"We were hesitating whether to disturb you, general, but it may be
an affair of some importance.  Under your orders a negro woman was
just now challenged stealing out of the lines.  Attempting to
escape, she was chased, there was a struggle and scramble over the
wall, and she fell, striking her head.  She was brought into the
guardhouse unconscious."

"Very good.  I will see her," said Brant, with a feeling of relief.

"One moment, general.  We thought you would perhaps prefer to see
her alone," said the surgeon, "for when I endeavored to bring her
to, and was sponging her face and head to discover her injuries,
her color came off!  She was a white woman--stained and disguised
as a mulatto."

For an instant Brant's heart sank.  It was Miss Faulkner.

"Did you recognize her?" he said, glancing from the one to the
other.  "Have you seen her here before?"

"No, sir," replied the aide-de-camp.  "But she seemed to be quite a
superior woman--a lady, I should say."

Brant breathed more freely.

"Where is she now?" he asked.

"In the guardhouse.  We thought it better not to bring her into
hospital, among the men, until we had your orders."

"You have done well," returned Brant gravely.  "And you will keep
this to yourselves for the present; but see that she is brought
here quietly and with as little publicity as possible.  Put her in
my room above, which I give up to her and any necessary attendant.
But you will look carefully after her, doctor,"--he turned to the
surgeon,--"and when she recovers consciousness let me know."

He moved away.  Although attaching little importance to the
mysterious message, whether sent by Miss Faulkner or emanating from
the stranger herself, which, he reasoned, was based only upon a
knowledge of the original plan of attack, he nevertheless quickly
dispatched a small scouting party in the direction from which the
attack might come, with orders to fall back and report at once.
With a certain half irony of recollection he had selected Jim
Hooker to accompany the party as a volunteer.  This done, he
returned to the gallery.  The surgeon met him at the door.

"The indications of concussion are passing away," he said, "but she
seems to be suffering from the exhaustion following some great
nervous excitement.  You may go in--she may rally from it at any
moment."

With the artificial step and mysterious hush of the ordinary
visitor to a sick bed, Brant entered the room.  But some instinct
greater than this common expression of humanity held him suddenly
in awe.  The room seemed no longer his--it had slipped back into
that austere conventual privacy which had first impressed him.  Yet
he hesitated; another strange suggestion--it seemed almost a vague
recollection--overcame him like some lingering perfume, far off and
pathetic, in its dying familiarity.  He turned his eyes almost
timidly towards the bed.  The coverlet was drawn up near the throat
of the figure to replace the striped cotton gown stained with blood
and dust, which had been hurriedly torn off and thrown on a chair.
The pale face, cleansed of blood and disguising color, the long
hair, still damp from the surgeon's sponge, lay rigidly back on the
pillow.  Suddenly this man of steady nerve uttered a faint cry,
and, with a face as white as the upturned one before him, fell on
his knees beside the bed.  For the face that lay there was his
wife's!

Yes, hers!  But the beautiful hair that she had gloried in--the
hair that in his youth he had thought had once fallen like a
benediction on his shoulder--was streaked with gray along the blue-
veined hollows of the temples; the orbits of those clear eyes,
beneath their delicately arched brows, were ringed with days of
suffering; only the clear-cut profile, even to the delicate
imperiousness of lips and nostril, was still there in all its
beauty.  The coverlet had slipped from her shoulder; its familiar
cold contour startled him.  He remembered how, in their early
married days, he had felt the sanctity of that Diana-like
revelation, and the still nymph-like austerity which clung to this
strange, childless woman.  He even fancied that he breathed again
the subtle characteristic perfume of the laces, embroideries, and
delicate enwrappings in her chamber at Robles.  Perhaps it was the
intensity of his gaze--perhaps it was the magnetism of his
presence--but her lips parted with a half sigh, half moan.  Her
head, although her eyes were still closed, turned on the pillow
instinctively towards him.  He rose from his knees.  Her eyes
opened slowly.  As the first glare of wonderment cleared from them,
they met him--in the old antagonism of spirit.  Yet her first
gesture was a pathetic feminine movement with both hands to arrange
her straggling hair.  It brought her white fingers, cleaned of
their disguising stains, as a sudden revelation to her of what had
happened; she instantly slipped them back under the coverlet again.
Brant did not speak, but with folded arms stood gazing upon her.
And it was her voice that first broke the silence.

"You have recognized me?  Well, I suppose you know all," she said,
with a weak half-defiance.

He bowed his head.  He felt as yet he could not trust his voice,
and envied her her own.

"I may sit up, mayn't I?"  She managed, by sheer force of will, to
struggle to a sitting posture.  Then, as the coverlet slipped from
the bare shoulder, she said, as she drew it, with a shiver of
disgust, around her again,--

"I forgot that you strip women, you Northern soldiers!  But I
forgot, too," she added, with a sarcastic smile, "that you are also
my husband, and I am in your room."

The contemptuous significance of her speech dispelled the last
lingering remnant of Brant's dream.  In a voice as dry as her own,
he said,--

"I am afraid you will now have to remember only that I am a
Northern general, and you a Southern spy."

"So be it," she said gravely.  Then impulsively, "But I have not
spied on YOU."

Yet, the next moment, she bit her lips as if the expression had
unwittingly escaped her; and with a reckless shrug of her shoulders
she lay back on her pillow.

"It matters not," said Brant coldly.  "You have used this house and
those within it to forward your designs.  It is not your fault that
you found nothing in the dispatch-box you opened."

She stared at him quickly; then shrugged her shoulders again.

"I might have known she was false to me," she said bitterly, "and
that you would wheedle her soul away as you have others.  Well, she
betrayed me!  For what?"

A flush passed over Brant's face.  But with an effort he contained
himself.

"It was the flower that betrayed you!  The flower whose red dust
fell in the box when you opened it on the desk by the window in
yonder room--the flower that stood in the window as a signal--the
flower I myself removed, and so spoiled the miserable plot that
your friends concocted."

A look of mingled terror and awe came into her face.

"YOU changed the signal!" she repeated dazedly; then, in a lower
voice, "that accounts for it all!"  But the next moment she turned
again fiercely upon him.  "And you mean to tell me that she didn't
help you--that she didn't sell me--your wife--to you for--for what
was it?  A look--a kiss!"

"I mean to say that she did not know the signal was changed, and
that she herself restored it to its place.  It is no fault of hers
nor yours that I am not here a prisoner."

She passed her thin hand dazedly across her forehead.

"I see," she muttered.  Then again bursting out passionately, she
said--"Fool! you never would have been touched!  Do you think that
Lee would have gone for you, with higher game in your division
commander?  No!  Those supports were a feint to draw him to your
assistance while our main column broke his centre.  Yes, you may
stare at me, Clarence Brant.  You are a good lawyer--they say a
dashing fighter, too.  I never thought you a coward, even in your
irresolution; but you are fighting with men drilled in the art of
war and strategy when you were a boy outcast on the plains."  She
stopped, closed her eyes, and then added, wearily--"But that was
yesterday--to-day, who knows?  All may be changed.  The supports
may still attack you.  That was why I stopped to write you that
note an hour ago, when I believed I should be leaving here for
ever.  Yes, I did it!" she went on, with half-wearied, half-dogged
determination.  "You may as well know all.  I had arranged to fly.
Your pickets were to be drawn by friends of mine, who were waiting
for me beyond your lines.  Well, I lingered here when I saw you
arrive--lingered to write you that note.  And--I was too late!"

But Brant had been watching her varying expression, her kindling
eye, her strange masculine grasp of military knowledge, her
soldierly phraseology, all so new to her, that he scarcely heeded
the feminine ending of her speech.  It seemed to him no longer the
Diana of his youthful fancy, but some Pallas Athene, who now looked
up at him from the pillow.  He had never before fully believed in
her unselfish devotion to the cause until now, when it seemed to
have almost unsexed her.  In his wildest comprehension of her he
had never dreamed her a Joan of Arc, and yet hers was the face
which might have confronted him, exalted and inspired, on the
battlefield itself.  He recalled himself with an effort.

"I thank you for your would-be warning," he said more gently, if
not so tenderly, "and God knows I wish your flight had been
successful.  But even your warning is unnecessary, for the supports
had already come up; they had followed the second signal, and
diverged to engage our division on the left, leaving me alone.  And
their ruse of drawing our commander to assist me would not have
been successful, as I had suspected it, and sent a message to him
that I wanted no help."

It was the truth; it was the sole purport of the note he had sent
through Miss Faulkner.  He would not have disclosed his sacrifice;
but so great was the strange domination of this woman still over
him, that he felt compelled to assert his superiority.  She fixed
her eyes upon him.

"And Miss Faulkner took your message?" she said slowly.  "Don't
deny it!  No one else could have passed through our lines; and you
gave her a safe conduct through yours.  Yes, I might have known it.
And this was the creature they sent me for an ally and confidant!"

For an instant Brant felt the sting of this enforced contrast
between the two women.  But he only said,--

"You forget that I did not know you were the spy, nor do I believe
that she suspected you were my wife."

"Why should she?" she said almost fiercely.  "I am known among
these people only by the name of Benham---my maiden name.  Yes!--
you can take me out, and shoot me under that name, without
disgracing yours.  Nobody will know that the Southern spy was the
wife of the Northern general!  You see, I have thought even of
that!"

"And thinking of that," said Brant slowly, "you have put yourself--
I will not say in my power, for you are in the power of any man in
this camp who may know you, or even hear you speak.  Well, let us
understand each other plainly.  I do not know how great a sacrifice
your devotion to your cause demands of you; I do know what it seems
to demand of me.  Hear me, then!  I will do my best to protect you,
and get you safely away from here; but, failing that, I tell you
plainly that I shall blow out your brains and my own together."

She knew that he would do it.  Yet her eyes suddenly beamed with a
new and awakening light; she put back her hair again, and half
raised herself upon the pillow, to gaze at his dark, set face.

"And as I shall let no other life but ours be periled in this
affair," he went on quietly, "and will accompany you myself in some
disguise beyond the lines, we will together take the risks--or the
bullets of the sentries that may save us both all further trouble.
An hour or two more will settle that.  Until then your weak
condition will excuse you from any disturbance or intrusion here.
The mulatto woman you have sometimes personated may be still in
this house; I will appoint her to attend you.  I suppose you can
trust her, for you must personate her again, and escape in her
clothes, while she takes your place in this room as my prisoner."

"Clarence!"

Her voice had changed suddenly; it was no longer bitter and
stridulous, but low and thrilling as he had heard her call to him
that night in the patio of Robles.  He turned quickly.  She was
leaning from the bed--her thin, white hands stretched appealingly
towards him.

"Let us go together, Clarence," she said eagerly.  "Let us leave
this horrible place--these wicked, cruel people--forever.  Come
with me!  Come with me to my people--to my own faith--to my own
house--which shall be yours!  Come with me to defend it with your
good sword, Clarence, against those vile invaders with whom you
have nothing in common, and who are the dirt under your feet.  Yes,
yes!  I know it!--I have done you wrong--I have lied to you when I
spoke against your skill and power.  You are a hero--a born leader
of men!  I know it!  Have I not heard it from the men who have
fought against you, and yet admired and understood you, ay, better
than your own?--gallant men, Clarence, soldiers bred who did not
know what you were to me nor how proud I was of you even while I
hated you?  Come with me!  Think what we would do together--with
one faith--one cause--one ambition!  Think, Clarence, there is no
limit you might not attain!  We are no niggards of our rewards and
honors--we have no hireling votes to truckle to--we know our
friends!  Even I--Clarence--I"--there was a strange pathos in the
sudden humility that seemed to overcome her--"I have had my reward
and known my power.  I have been sent abroad, in the confidence of
the highest--to the highest.  Don't turn from me.  I am offering
you no bribe, Clarence, only your deserts.  Come with me.  Leave
these curs behind, and live the hero that you are!"

He turned his blazing eyes upon her.

"If you were a man"--he began passionately, then stopped.

"No!  I am only a woman and must fight in a woman's way," she
interrupted bitterly.  "Yes!  I intreat, I implore, I wheedle, I
flatter, I fawn, I lie!  I creep where you stand upright, and pass
through doors to which you would not bow.  You wear your blazon of
honor on your shoulder; I hide mine in a slave's gown.  And yet I
have worked and striven and suffered!  Listen, Clarence," her voice
again sank to its appealing minor,--"I know what you men call
'honor,' that which makes you cling to a merely spoken word, or an
empty oath.  Well, let that pass!  I am weary; I have done my share
of this work, you have done yours.  Let us both fly; let us leave
the fight to those who shall come after us, and let us go together
to some distant land where the sounds of these guns or the blood of
our brothers no longer cry out to us for vengeance!  There are
those living here--I have met them, Clarence," she went on
hurriedly, "who think it wrong to lift up fratricidal hands in the
struggle, yet who cannot live under the Northern yoke.  They are,"
her voice hesitated, "good men and women--they are respected--they
are"--

"Recreants and slaves, before whom you, spy as you are--stand a
queen!" broke in Brant, passionately.  He stopped and turned
towards the window.  After a pause he came back again towards the
bed--paused again and then said in a lower voice--"Four years ago,
Alice, in the patio of our house at Robles, I might have listened
to this proposal, and--I tremble to think--I might have accepted
it!  I loved you; I was as weak, as selfish, as unreflecting, my
life was as purposeless--but for you--as the creatures you speak
of.  But give me now, at least, the credit of a devotion to my
cause equal to your own--a credit which I have never denied you!
For the night that you left me, I awoke to a sense of my own
worthlessness and degradation--perhaps I have even to thank you for
that awakening--and I realized the bitter truth.  But that night I
found my true vocation--my purpose, my manhood"--

A bitter laugh came from the pillow on which she had languidly
thrown herself.

"I believe I left you with Mrs. Hooker--spare me the details."

The blood rushed to Brant's face and then receded as suddenly.

"You left me with Captain Pinckney, who had tempted you, and whom I
killed!" he said furiously.

They were both staring savagely at each other.  Suddenly he said,
"Hush!" and sprang towards the door, as the sound of hurried
footsteps echoed along the passage.  But he was too late; it was
thrown open to the officer of the guard, who appeared, standing on
the threshold.

"Two Confederate officers arrested hovering around our pickets.
They demand to see you."

Before Brant could interpose, two men in riding cloaks of
Confederate gray stepped into the room with a jaunty and self-
confident air.

"Not DEMAND, general," said the foremost, a tall, distinguished-
looking man, lifting his hand with a graceful deprecating air.  "In
fact, too sorry to bother you with an affair of no importance
except to ourselves.  A bit of after-dinner bravado brought us in
contact with your pickets, and, of course, we had to take the
consequences.  Served us right, and we were lucky not to have got a
bullet through us.  Gad!  I'm afraid my men would have been less
discreet!  I am Colonel Lagrange, of the 5th Tennessee; my young
friend here is Captain Faulkner, of the 1st Kentucky.  Some excuse
for a youngster like him--none for me!  I"--

He stopped, for his eyes suddenly fell upon the bed and its
occupant.  Both he and his companion started.  But to the natural,
unaffected dismay of a gentleman who had unwittingly intruded upon
a lady's bedchamber, Brant's quick eye saw a more disastrous
concern superadded.  Colonel Lagrange was quick to recover himself,
as they both removed their caps.

"A thousand pardons," he said, hurriedly stepping backwards to the
door.  "But I hardly need say to a fellow-officer, general, that we
had no idea of making so gross an intrusion!  We heard some cock-
and-bull story of your being occupied--cross-questioning an escaped
or escaping nigger--or we should never have forced ourselves upon
you."

Brant glanced quickly at his wife.  Her face had apparently become
rigid on the entrance of the two men; her eyes were coldly fixed
upon the ceiling.  He bowed formally, and, with a wave of his hand
towards the door, said,--

"I will hear your story below, gentleman."

He followed them from the room, stopped to quietly turn the key in
the lock, and then motioned them to precede him down the staircase.



CHAPTER VII.


Not a word was exchanged till they had reached the lower landing
and Brant's private room.  Dismissing his subaltern and orderly
with a sign, Brant turned towards his prisoners.  The jaunty ease,
but not the self-possession, had gone from Lagrange's face; the
eyes of Captain Faulkner were fixed on his older companion with a
half-humorous look of perplexity.

"I am afraid I can only repeat, general, that our foolhardy freak
has put us in collision with your sentries," said Lagrange, with a
slight hauteur, that replaced his former jauntiness; "and we were
very properly made prisoners.  If you will accept my parole, I have
no doubt our commander will proceed to exchange a couple of gallant
fellows of yours, whom I have had the honor of meeting within our
own lines, and whom you must miss probably more than I fear our
superiors miss us."

"Whatever brought you here, gentlemen," said Brant drily, "I am
glad, for your sakes, that you are in uniform, although it does
not, unfortunately, relieve me of an unpleasant duty."

"I don't think I understand you," returned Lagrange, coldly.

"If you had not been in uniform, you would probably have been shot
down as spies, without the trouble of capture," said Brant quietly.

"Do you mean to imply, sir"--began Lagrange sternly.

"I mean to say that the existence of a Confederate spy between this
camp and the division headquarters is sufficiently well known to us
to justify the strongest action."

"And pray, how can that affect us?" said Lagrange haughtily.

"I need not inform so old a soldier as Colonel Lagrange that the
aiding, abetting, and even receiving information from a spy or
traitor within one's lines is an equally dangerous service."

"Perhaps you would like to satisfy yourself, General," said Colonel
Lagrange, with an ironical laugh.  "Pray do not hesitate on account
of our uniform.  Search us if you like."

"Not on entering my lines, Colonel," replied Brant, with quiet
significance.

Lagrange's cheek flushed.  But he recovered himself quickly, and
with a formal bow said,--

"You will, then, perhaps, let us know your pleasure?"

"My DUTY, Colonel, is to keep you both close prisoners here until I
have an opportunity to forward you to the division commander, with
a report of the circumstances of your arrest.  That I propose to
do.  How soon I may have that opportunity, or if I am ever to have
it," continued Brant, fixing his clear eyes significantly on
Lagrange, "depends upon the chances of war, which you probably
understand as well as I do."

"We should never think of making any calculation on the action of
an officer of such infinite resources as General Brant," said
Lagrange ironically.

"You will, no doubt, have an opportunity of stating your own case
to the division commander," continued Brant, with an unmoved face.
"And," he continued, turning for the first time to Captain
Faulkner, "when you tell the commander what I believe to be the
fact--from your name and resemblance--that you are a relation of
the young lady who for the last three weeks has been an inmate of
this house under a pass from Washington, you will, I have no doubt,
favorably explain your own propinquity to my lines."

"My sister Tilly!" said the young officer impulsively.  "But she is
no longer here.  She passed through the lines back to Washington
yesterday.  No," he added, with a light laugh, "I'm afraid that
excuse won't count for to-day."

A sudden frown upon the face of the elder officer, added to the
perfect ingenuousness of Faulkner's speech, satisfied Brant that he
had not only elicited the truth, but that Miss Faulkner had been
successful.  But he was sincere in his suggestion that her
relationship to the young officer would incline the division
commander to look leniently upon his fault, for he was conscious of
a singular satisfaction in thus being able to serve her.  Of the
real object of the two men before him he had no doubt.  They were
"the friends" of his wife, who were waiting for her outside the
lines!  Chance alone had saved her from being arrested with them,
with the consequent exposure of her treachery before his own men,
who, as yet, had no proof of her guilt, nor any suspicion of her
actual identity.  Meanwhile his own chance of conveying her with
safety beyond his lines was not affected by the incident; the
prisoners dare not reveal what they knew of her, and it was with a
grim triumph that he thought of compassing her escape without their
aid.  Nothing of this, however, was visible in his face, which the
younger man watched with a kind of boyish curiosity, while Colonel
Lagrange regarded the ceiling with a politely repressed yawn.  "I
regret," concluded Brant, as he summoned the officer of the guard,
"that I shall have to deprive you of each other's company during
the time you are here; but I shall see that you, separately, want
for nothing in your confinement."

"If this is with a view to separate interrogatory, general, I can
retire now," said Lagrange, rising, with ironical politeness.

"I believe I have all the information I require," returned Brant,
with undisturbed composure.  Giving the necessary orders to his
subaltern, he acknowledged with equal calm the formal salutes of
the two prisoners as they were led away, and returned quickly to
his bedroom above.  He paused instinctively for a moment before the
closed door, and listened.  There was no sound from within.  He
unlocked the door, and opened it.

So quiet was the interior that for an instant, without glancing at
the bed, he cast a quick look at the window, which, till then, he
had forgotten, and which he remembered gave upon the veranda roof.
But it was still closed, and as he approached the bed, he saw his
wife still lying there, in the attitude in which he had left her.
But her eyes were ringed, and slightly filmed, as if with recent
tears.

It was perhaps this circumstance that softened his voice, still
harsh with command, as he said,--

"I suppose you knew those two men?"

"Yes."

"And that I have put it out of their power to help you?"

"I do."

There was something so strangely submissive in her voice that he
again looked suspiciously at her.  But he was shocked to see that
she was quite pale now, and that the fire had gone out of her dark
eyes.

"Then I may tell you what is my plan to save you.  But, first, you
must find this mulatto woman who has acted as your double."

"She is here."

"Here?"

"Yes."

"How do you know it?" he asked, in quick suspicion.

"She was not to leave this place until she knew I was safe within
our lines.  I have some friends who are faithful to me."  After a
pause she added, "She has been here already."

He looked at her, startled.  "Impossible--I"--

"You locked the door.  Yes! but she has a second key.  And even if
she had not, there is another entrance from that closet.  You do
not know this house: you have been here two weeks; I spent two
years of my life, as a girl, in this room."

An indescribable sensation came over him; he remembered how he had
felt when he first occupied it; this was followed by a keen sense
of shame on reflecting that he had been, ever since, but a helpless
puppet in the power of his enemies, and that she could have escaped
if she would, even now.

"Perhaps," he said grimly, "you have already arranged your plans?"

She looked at him with a singular reproachfulness even in her
submission.

"I have only told her to be ready to change clothes with me and
help me color my face and hands at the time appointed.  I have left
the rest to you."

"Then this is my plan.  I have changed only a detail.  You and she
must both leave this house at the same time, by different exits,
but one of them must be private--and unknown to my men.  Do you
know of such a one?"

"Yes," she said, "in the rear of the negro quarters."

"Good," he replied, "that will be your way out.  She will leave
here, publicly, through the parade, armed with a pass from me.  She
will be overhauled and challenged by the first sentry near the
guardhouse, below the wall.  She will be subjected to some delay
and scrutiny, which she will, however, be able to pass better than
you would.  This will create the momentary diversion that we
require.  In the mean time, you will have left the house by the
rear, and you will then keep in the shadow of the hedge until you
can drop down along the Run, where it empties into the swamp.
That," he continued, fixing his keen eyes upon her, "is the one
weak point in the position of this place that is neither overlooked
nor defended.  But perhaps," he added again grimly, "you already
know it."

"It is the marsh where the flowers grow, near the path where you
met Miss Faulkner.  I had crossed the marsh to give her a letter,"
she said slowly.

A bitter smile came over Brant's face, but passed as quickly.

"Enough," he said quietly, "I will meet you beside the Run, and
cross the marsh with you until you are within hailing distance of
your lines.  I will be in plain clothes, Alice," he went on slowly,
"for it will not be the commander of this force who accompanies
you, but your husband, and, without disgracing his uniform, he will
drop to your level; for the instant he passes his own lines, in
disguise, he will become, like you, a spy, and amenable to its
penalties."

Her eyes seemed suddenly to leap up to his with that strange look
of awakening and enthusiasm which he had noted before.  And in its
complete prepossession of all her instincts she rose from the bed,
unheeding her bared arms and shoulders and loosened hair, and stood
upright before him.  For an instant husband and wife regarded each
other as unreservedly as in their own chamber at Robles.

"When shall I go?"

He glanced through the window already growing lighter with the
coming dawn.  The relief would pass in a few moments; the time
seemed propitious.

"At once," he said.  "I will send Rose to you."

But his wife had already passed into the closet, and was tapping
upon some inner door.  He heard the sound of hinges turning and the
rustling of garments.  She reappeared, holding the curtains of the
closet together with her hand, and said,--

"Go!  When she comes to your office for the pass, you will know
that I have gone."

He turned away.

"Stop!" she said faintly.

He turned back.  Her expression had again changed.  Her face was
deadly pale; a strange tremor seemed to have taken possession of
her.  Her hands dropped from the curtain.  Her beautiful arms moved
slightly forward; it seemed to him that she would in the next
moment have extended them towards him.  But even then she said
hurriedly, "Go!  Go!" and slipped again behind the curtains.

He quickly descended the stairs as the sound of trampling feet on
the road, and the hurried word of command, announced the return of
the scouting party.  The officer had little report to make beyond
the fact that a morning mist, creeping along the valley, prevented
any further observation, and bade fair to interrupt their own
communications with the camp.  Everything was quiet in the west,
although the enemy's lines along the ridge seemed to have receded.

Brant had listened impatiently, for a new idea had seized him.
Hooker was of the party, and was the one man in whom he could
partly confide, and obtain a disguise.  He at once made his way to
the commissary wagons--one of which he knew Hooker used as a tent.
Hastily telling him that he wished to visit the pickets without
recognition, he induced him to lend him his slouched hat and frock
coat, leaving with him his own distinguishing tunic, hat, and
sword.  He resisted the belt and pistols which Hooker would have
forced upon him.  As he left the wagon he was amusedly conscious
that his old companion was characteristically examining the
garments he had left behind with mingled admiration and envy.  But
he did not know, as he slipped out of the camp, that Mr. Hooker was
quietly trying them on, before a broken mirror in the wagon-head!

The gray light of that summer morning was already so strong that,
to avoid detection, he quickly dropped into the shadow of the gully
that sloped towards the Run.  The hot mist which the scouts had
seen was now lying like a tranquil sea between him and the pickets
of the enemy's rear-guard, which it seemed to submerge, and was
clinging in moist tenuous swathes--like drawn-out cotton wool--
along the ridge, half obliterating its face.  From the valley in
the rear it was already stealing in a thin white line up the slope
like the advance of a ghostly column, with a stealthiness that, in
spite of himself, touched him with superstitious significance.  A
warm perfume, languid and treacherous--as from the swamp magnolia--
seemed to rise from the half-hidden marsh.  An ominous silence,
that appeared to be a part of this veiling of all things under the
clear opal-tinted sky above, was so little like the hush of rest
and peace, that he half-yearned for the outburst of musketry and
tumult of attack that might dispel it.  All that he had ever heard
or dreamed of the insidious South, with its languid subtleties of
climate and of race, seemed to encompass him here.

But the next moment he saw the figure he was waiting for stealing
towards him from the shadow of the gulley beneath the negro
quarters.

Even in that uncertain light there was no mistaking the tall
figure, the gaudily striped clinging gown and turbaned head.  And
then a strange revulsion of feeling, quite characteristic of the
emotional side of his singular temperament, overcame him.  He was
taking leave of his wife--the dream of his youth--perhaps forever!
It should be no parting in anger as at Robles; it should be with a
tenderness that would blot out their past in their separate
memories--God knows! it might even be that a parting at that moment
was a joining of them in eternity.  In his momentary exaltation it
even struck him that it was a duty, no less sacred, no less
unselfish than the one to which he had devoted his life.  The light
was growing stronger; he could hear voices in the nearest picket
line, and the sound of a cough in the invading mist.  He made a
hurried sign to the on-coming figure to follow him, ran ahead, and
halted at last in the cover of a hackmatack bush.  Still gazing
forward over the marsh, he stealthily held out his hand behind him
as the rustling skirt came nearer.  At last his hand was touched--
but even at that touch he started and turned quickly.

It was not his wife, but Rose!--her mulatto double!  Her face was
rigid with fright, her beady eyes staring in their china sockets,
her white teeth chattering.  Yet she would have spoken.

"Hush!" he said, clutching her hand, in a fierce whisper.  "Not a
word!"

She was holding something white in her fingers; he snatched it
quickly.  It was a note from his wife--not in the disguised hand of
her first warning, but in one that he remembered as if it were a
voice from their past.

"Forgive me for disobeying you to save you from capture, disgrace,
or death--which would have come to you where you were going!  I
have taken Rose's pass.  You need not fear that your honor will
suffer by it, for if I am stopped I shall confess that I took it
from her.  Think no more of me, Clarence, but only of yourself.
You are in danger."

He crushed the letter in his hand.

"Tell me," he said in a fierce whisper, seizing her arm, "and speak
low.  When did you leave her?"

"Sho'ly just now!" gasped the frightened woman.

He flung her aside.  There might be still time to overtake and save
her before she reached the picket lines.  He ran up the gully, and
out on to the slope towards the first guard-post.  But a familiar
challenge reached his ear, and his heart stopped beating.

"Who goes there?"

There was a pause, a rattle of arms voices--another pause--and
Brant stood breathlessly listening.  Then the voice rose again
slowly and clearly: "Pass the mulatto woman!"

Thank God! she was saved!  But the thought had scarcely crossed his
mind before it seemed to him that a blinding crackle of sparks
burst out along the whole slope below the wall, a characteristic
yell which he knew too well rang in his ears, and an undulating
line of dusty figures came leaping like gray wolves out of the mist
upon his pickets.  He heard the shouts of his men falling back as
they fired; the harsh commands of a few officers hurrying to their
posts, and knew that he had been hopelessly surprised and surrounded!

He ran forward among his disorganized men.  To his consternation no
one seemed to heed him!  Then the remembrance of his disguise
flashed upon him.  But he had only time to throw away his hat and
snatch a sword from a falling lieutenant, before a scorching flash
seemed to pass before his eyes and burn through his hair, and he
dropped like a log beside his subaltern.

        .        .        .        .        .        .

An aching under the bandage around his head where a spent bullet
had grazed his scalp, and the sound of impossible voices in his
ears were all he knew as he struggled slowly back to consciousness
again.  Even then it still seemed a delusion,--for he was lying on
a cot in his own hospital, yet with officers of the division staff
around him, and the division commander himself standing by his
side, and regarding him with an air of grave but not unkindly
concern.  But the wounded man felt instinctively that it was not
the effect of his physical condition, and a sense of shame came
suddenly over him, which was not dissipated by his superior's
words.  For, motioning the others aside, the major-general leaned
over his cot, and said,--

"Until a few moments ago, the report was that you had been captured
in the first rush of the rear-guard which we were rolling up for
your attack, and when you were picked up, just now, in plain
clothes on the slope, you were not recognized.  The one thing
seemed to be as improbable as the other," he added significantly.

The miserable truth flashed across Brant's mind.  Hooker must have
been captured in his clothes--perhaps in some extravagant sally--
and had not been recognized in the confusion by his own officers.
Nevertheless, he raised his eyes to his superior.

"You got my note?"

The general's brow darkened.

"Yes," he said slowly, "but finding you thus unprepared--I had been
thinking just now that you had been deceived by that woman--or by
others--and that it was a clumsy forgery."  He stopped, and seeing
the hopeless bewilderment in the face of the wounded man, added
more kindly: "But we will not talk of that in your present
condition.  The doctor says a few hours will put you straight
again.  Get strong, for I want you to lose no time--for your own
sake--to report yourself at Washington."

"Report myself--at Washington!" repeated Brant slowly.

"That was last night's order," said the commander, with military
curtness.  Then he burst out: "I don't understand it, Brant!  I
believe you have been misunderstood, misrepresented, perhaps
maligned and I shall make it MY business to see the thing through--
but those are the Department orders.  And for the present--I am
sorry to say you are relieved of your command."

He turned away, and Brant closed his eyes.  With them it seemed to
him that he closed his career.  No one would ever understand his
explanation--even had he been tempted to give one, and he knew he
never would.  Everything was over now!  Even this wretched bullet
had not struck him fairly, and culminated his fate as it might!
For an instant, he recalled his wife's last offer to fly with him
beyond the seas--beyond this cruel injustice--but even as he
recalled it, he knew that flight meant the worst of all--a half-
confession!  But she had escaped!  Thank God for that!  Again and
again in his hopeless perplexity this comfort returned to him,--he
had saved her; he had done his duty.  And harping upon this in his
strange fatalism, it at last seemed to him that this was for what
he had lived--for what he had suffered--for what he had fitly ended
his career.  Perhaps it was left for him now to pass his remaining
years in forgotten exile--even as his father had--his father!--his
breath came quickly at the thought--God knows! perhaps as
wrongfully accused!  It may have been a Providence that she had
borne him no child, to whom this dreadful heritage could be again
transmitted.

There was something of this strange and fateful resignation in his
face, a few hours later, when he was able to be helped again into
the saddle.  But he could see in the eyes of the few comrades who
commiseratingly took leave of him, a vague, half-repressed awe of
some indefinite weakness in the man, that mingled with their
heartfelt parting with a gallant soldier.  Yet even this touched
him no longer.  He cast a glance at the house and the room where he
had parted from her, at the slope from which she had passed--and
rode away.

And then, as his figure disappeared down the road, the restrained
commentary of wonder, surmise, and criticism broke out:--

"It must have been something mighty bad, for the old man, who
swears by him, looked rather troubled.  And it was deuced queer,
you know, this changing clothes with somebody, just before this
surprise!"

"Nonsense!  It's something away back of that!  Didn't you hear the
old man say that the orders for him to report himself came from
Washington LAST NIGHT?  No!"--the speaker lowered his voice--
"Strangeways says that he had regularly sold himself out to one of
them d----d secesh woman spies!  It's the old Marc Antony business
over again!"

"Now I think of it," said a younger subaltern, "he did seem
mightily taken with one of those quadroons or mulattoes he issued
orders against.  I suppose that was a blind for us!  I remember the
first day he saw her; he was regularly keen to know all about her."

Major Curtis gave a short laugh.

"That mulatto, Martin, was a white woman, burnt-corked!  She was
trying to get through the lines last night, and fell off a wall or
got a knock on the head from a sentry's carbine.  When she was
brought in, Doctor Simmons set to washing the blood off her face;
the cork came off and the whole thing came out.  Brant hushed it
up--and the woman, too--in his own quarters!  It's supposed now
that she got away somehow in the rush!"

"It goes further back than that, gentlemen," said the adjutant
authoritatively.  "They say his wife was a howling secessionist,
four years ago, in California, was mixed up in a conspiracy, and he
had to leave on account of it.  Look how thick he and that Miss
Faulkner became, before he helped HER off!"

"That's your jealousy, Tommy; she knew he was, by all odds, the
biggest man here, and a good deal more, too, and you had no show!"

In the laugh that followed, it would seem that Brant's eulogy had
been spoken and forgotten.  But as Lieutenant Martin was turning
away, a lingering corporal touched his cap.

"You were speaking of those prowling mulattoes, sir.  You know the
general passed one out this morning."

"So I have heard."

"I reckon she didn't get very far.  It was just at the time that we
were driven in by their first fire, and I think she got her share
of it, too.  Do you mind walking this way, sir!"

The lieutenant did not mind, although he rather languidly followed.
When they had reached the top of the gully, the corporal pointed to
what seemed to be a bit of striped calico hanging on a thorn bush
in the ravine.

"That's her," said the corporal.  "I know the dress; I was on guard
when she was passed.  The searchers, who were picking up our men,
haven't got to her yet; but she ain't moved or stirred these two
hours.  Would you like to go down and see her?"

The lieutenant hesitated.  He was young, and slightly fastidious as
to unnecessary unpleasantness.  He believed he would wait until the
searchers brought her up, when the corporal might call him.

The mist came up gloriously from the swamp like a golden halo.  And
as Clarence Brant, already forgotten, rode moodily through it
towards Washington, hugging to his heart the solitary comfort of
his great sacrifice, his wife, Alice Brant, for whom he had made
it, was lying in the ravine, dead and uncared for.  Perhaps it was
part of the inconsistency of her sex that she was pierced with the
bullets of those she had loved, and was wearing the garments of the
race that she had wronged.



PART III.


CHAPTER I.


It was sunset of a hot day at Washington.  Even at that hour the
broad avenues, which diverged from the Capitol like the rays of
another sun, were fierce and glittering.  The sterile distances
between glowed more cruelly than ever, and pedestrians, keeping in
the scant shade, hesitated on the curbstones before plunging into
the Sahara-like waste of crossings.  The city seemed deserted.
Even that vast army of contractors, speculators, place-hunters, and
lobbyists, which hung on the heels of the other army, and had
turned this pacific camp of the nation into a battlefield of
ignoble conflict and contention--more disastrous than the one to
the South--had slunk into their holes in hotel back bedrooms, in
shady barrooms, or in the negro quarters of Georgetown, as if the
majestic, white-robed Goddess enthroned upon the dome of the
Capitol had at last descended among them and was smiting to right
and left with the flat and flash of her insufferable sword.

Into this stifling atmosphere of greed and corruption Clarence
Brant stepped from the shadow of the War Department.  For the last
three weeks he had haunted its ante-rooms and audience-chambers, in
the vain hope of righting himself before his superiors, who were
content, without formulating charges against him, to keep him in
this disgrace of inaction and the anxiety of suspense.  Unable to
ascertain the details of the accusation, and conscious of his own
secret, he was debarred the last resort of demanding a court-
martial, which he knew could only exonerate him by the exposure of
the guilt of his wife, whom he still hoped had safely escaped.  His
division commander, in active operations in the field, had no time
to help him at Washington.  Elbowed aside by greedy contractors,
forestalled by selfish politicians, and disdaining the ordinary
method of influence, he had no friend to turn to.  In his few years
of campaigning he had lost his instinct of diplomacy, without
acquiring a soldier's bluntness.

The nearly level rays of the sun forced him at last to turn aside
into one of the openings of a large building--a famous caravansary
of that hotel-haunted capital, and he presently found himself in
the luxurious bar-room, fragrant with mint, and cool with ice-slabs
piled symmetrically on its marble counters.  A few groups of men
were seeking coolness at small tables with glasses before them and
palm-leaf fans in their hands, but a larger and noisier assemblage
was collected before the bar, where a man, collarless and in his
shirt-sleeves, with his back to the counter, was pretentiously
addressing them.  Brant, who had moodily dropped into a chair in
the corner, after ordering a cooling drink as an excuse for his
temporary refuge from the stifling street, half-regretted his
enforced participation in their conviviality.  But a sudden
lowering of the speaker's voice into a note of gloomy significance
seemed familiar to him.  He glanced at him quickly, from the shadow
of his corner.  He was not mistaken--it was Jim Hooker!

For the first time in his life, Brant wished to evade him.  In the
days of his own prosperity his heart had always gone out towards
this old companion of his boyhood; in his present humiliation his
presence jarred upon him.  He would have slipped away, but to do so
he would have had to pass before the counter again, and Hooker,
with the self-consciousness of a story-teller, had an eye on his
audience.  Brant, with a palm-leaf fan before his face, was obliged
to listen.

"Yes, gentlemen," said Hooker, examining his glass dramatically,
"when a man's been cooped up in a Rebel prison, with a death line
before him that he's obliged to cross every time he wants a square
drink, it seems sort of like a dream of his boyhood to be standin'
here comf'ble before his liquor, alongside o' white men once more.
And when he knows he's bin put to all that trouble jest to save the
reputation of another man, and the secrets of a few high and mighty
ones, it's almost enough to make his liquor go agin him."  He
stopped theatrically, seemed to choke emotionally over his brandy
squash, but with a pause of dramatic determination finally dashed
it down.  "No, gentlemen," he continued gloomily, "I don't say what
I'm back in Washington FOR--I don't say what I've been sayin' to
myself when I've bin picking the weevils outer my biscuits in Libby
Prison--but ef you don't see some pretty big men in the War
Department obliged to climb down in the next few days, my name
ain't Jim Hooker, of Hooker, Meacham & Co., Army Beef Contractors,
and the man who saved the fight at Gray Oaks!"

The smile of satisfaction that went around his audience--an audience
quick to seize the weakness of any performance--might have startled
a vanity less oblivious than Hooker's; but it only aroused Brant's
indignation and pity, and made his position still more intolerable.
But Hooker, scornfully expectorating a thin stream of tobacco juice
against the spittoon, remained for an instant gloomily silent.

"Tell us about the fight again," said a smiling auditor.

Hooker looked around the room with a certain dark suspiciousness,
and then, in an affected lower voice, which his theatrical
experience made perfectly audible, went on:--

"It ain't much to speak of, and if it wasn't for the principle of
the thing, I wouldn't be talking.  A man who's seen Injin fightin'
don't go much on this here West Point fightin' by rule-of-three--
but that ain't here or there!  Well, I'd bin out a-scoutin'--just
to help the boys along, and I was sittin' in my wagon about
daybreak, when along comes a brigadier-general, and he looks into
the wagon flap.  I oughter to tell you first, gentlemen, that every
minit he was expecting an attack--but he didn't let on a hint of it
to me.  'How are you, Jim?' said he.  'How are you, general?' said
I.  'Would you mind lendin' me your coat and hat?' says he.  'I've
got a little game here with our pickets, and I don't want to be
recognized.'  'Anything to oblige, general,' said I, and with that
I strips off my coat and hat, and he peels and puts them on.
'Nearly the same figure, Jim,' he says, lookin' at me, 'suppose you
try on my things and see.'  With that he hands me his coat--full
uniform, by G-d!--with the little gold cords and laces and the
epaulettes with a star, and I puts it on--quite innocent-like.  And
then he says, handin' me his sword and belt, 'Same inches round the
waist, I reckon,' and I puts that on too.  'You may as well keep
'em on till I come back,' says he, 'for it's mighty damp and
malarious at this time around the swamp.'  And with that he lights
out.  Well, gentlemen, I hadn't sat there five minutes before Bang!
bang! rattle! rattle! kershiz! and I hears a yell.  I steps out of
the wagon; everything's quite dark, but the rattle goes on.  Then
along trots an orderly, leadin' a horse.  'Mount, general,' he
says, 'we're attacked--the rear-guard's on us!'"

He paused, looked round his audience, and then in a lower voice,
said darkly,--

"I ain't a fool, an' in that minute a man's brain works at high
pressure, and I saw it all!  I saw the little game of the brigadier
to skunk away in my clothes and leave me to be captured in his.
But I ain't a dog neither, and I mounted that horse, gentlemen, and
lit out to where the men were formin'!  I didn't dare to speak,
lest they should know me, but I waved my sword, and by G-d! they
followed me!  And the next minit we was in the thick of it.  I had
my hat as full of holes as that ice strainer; I had a dozen bullets
through my coat, the fringe of my epaulettes was shot away, but I
kept the boys at their work--and we stopped 'em!  Stopped 'em,
gentlemen, until we heard the bugles of the rest of our division,
that all this time had been rolling that blasted rear-guard over on
us!  And it saved the fight; but the next minute the Johnny Rebs
made a last dash and cut me off--and there I was--by G-d, a
prisoner!  Me that had saved the fight!"

A ripple of ironical applause went round as Hooker gloomily drained
his glass, and then held up his hand in scornful deprecation.

"I said I was a prisoner, gentlemen," he went on bitterly; "but
that ain't all!  I asked to see Johnston, told him what I had done,
and demanded to be exchanged for a general officer.  He said, 'You
be d----d.'  I then sent word to the division commander-in-chief,
and told him how I had saved Gray Oaks when his brigadier ran away,
and he said, 'You be d----d.'  I've bin 'You be d----d' from the
lowest non-com. to the commander-in-chief, and when I was at last
exchanged, I was exchanged, gentlemen, for two mules and a broken
wagon.  But I'm here, gentlemen--as I was thar!"

"Why don't you see the President about it?" asked a bystander, in
affected commiseration.

Mr. Hooker stared contemptuously at the suggestion, and expectorated
his scornful dissent.

"Not much!" he said.  "But I'm going to see the man that carries
him and his Cabinet in his breeches-pocket--Senator Boompointer."

"Boompointer's a big man," continued his auditor doubtfully.  "Do
you know him?"

"Know him?"  Mr. Hooker laughed a bitter, sardonic laugh.  "Well,
gentlemen, I ain't the kind o' man to go in for family influence;
but," he added, with gloomy elevation, "considering he's an
intimate relation of mine, BY MARRIAGE, I should say I did."

Brant heard no more; the facing around of his old companion towards
the bar gave him that opportunity of escaping he had been waiting
for.  The defection of Hooker and his peculiar inventions were too
characteristic of him to excite surprise, and, although they no
longer awakened his good-humored tolerance, they were powerless to
affect him in his greater trouble.  Only one thing he learned--that
Hooker knew nothing of his wife being in camp as a spy--the
incident would have been too tempting to have escaped his dramatic
embellishment.  And the allusion to Senator Boompointer, monstrous
as it seemed in Hooker's mouth, gave him a grim temptation.  He had
heard of Boompointer's wonderful power; he believed that Susy would
and could help him--Clarence--whether she did or did not help
Hooker.  But the next moment he dismissed the idea, with a flushing
cheek.  How low had he already sunk, even to think of it!

It had been once or twice in his mind to seek the President, and,
under a promise of secrecy, reveal a part of his story.  He had
heard many anecdotes of his goodness of heart and generous
tolerance of all things, but with this was joined--so said
contemporaneous history--a flippancy of speech and a brutality of
directness from which Clarence's sensibility shrank.  Would he see
anything in his wife but a common spy on his army; would he see
anything in him but the weak victim, like many others, of a
scheming woman?  Stories current in camp and Congress of the way
that this grim humorist had, with an apposite anecdote or a rugged
illustration, brushed away the most delicate sentiment or the
subtlest poetry, even as he had exposed the sham of Puritanic
morality or of Epicurean ethics.  Brant had even solicited an
audience, but had retired awkwardly, and with his confidence
unspoken, before the dark, humorous eyes, that seemed almost too
tolerant of his grievance.  He had been to levees, and his heart
had sunk equally before the vulgar crowd, who seemed to regard this
man as their own buffoon, and the pompousness of position, learning
and dignity, which he seemed to delight to shake and disturb.

One afternoon, a few days later, in sheer listlessness of purpose,
he found himself again at the White House.  The President was
giving audience to a deputation of fanatics, who, with a pathetic
simplicity almost equal to his own pathetic tolerance, were urging
upon this ruler of millions the policy of an insignificant score,
and Brant listened to his patient, practical response of facts and
logic, clothed in simple but sinewy English, up to the inevitable
climax of humorous illustration, which the young brigadier could
now see was necessary to relieve the grimness of his refusal.  For
the first time Brant felt the courage to address him, and resolved
to wait until the deputation retired.  As they left the gallery he
lingered in the ante-room for the President to appear.  But, as he
did not come, afraid of losing his chances, he returned to the
gallery.  Alone in his privacy and shadow, the man he had just left
was standing by a column, in motionless abstraction, looking over
the distant garden.  But the kindly, humorous face was almost
tragic with an intensity of weariness!  Every line of those strong,
rustic features was relaxed under a burden which even the long,
lank, angular figure--overgrown and unfinished as his own West--
seemed to be distorted in its efforts to adjust itself to; while
the dark, deep-set eyes were abstracted with the vague prescience
of the prophet and the martyr.  Shocked at that sudden change,
Brant felt his cheek burn with shame.  And he was about to break
upon that wearied man's unbending; he was about to add his petty
burden to the shoulders of this Western Atlas.  He drew back
silently, and descended the stairs.

But before he had left the house, while mingling with the crowd in
one of the larger rooms, he saw the President reappear beside an
important, prosperous-looking figure, on whom the kindly giant was
now smiling with humorous toleration.  He noticed the divided
attention of the crowd; the name of Senator Boompointer was upon
every lip; he was nearly face to face with that famous dispenser of
place and preferment--this second husband of Susy!  An indescribable
feeling--half cynical, half fateful--came over him. He would not
have been surprised to see Jim Hooker join the throng, which now
seemed to him to even dwarf the lonely central figure that had so
lately touched him!  He wanted to escape it all!

But his fate brought him to the entrance at the same moment that
Boompointer was leaving it, and that distinguished man brushed
hastily by him as a gorgeous carriage, drawn by two spirited
horses, and driven by a resplendent negro coachman, dashed up.
It was the Boompointer carriage.

A fashionably-dressed, pretty woman, who, in style, bearing,
opulent contentment, and ingenuous self-consciousness, was in
perfect keeping with the slight ostentation of the equipage, was
its only occupant.  As Boompointer stepped into the vehicle, her
blue eyes fell for an instant on Brant.  A happy, childlike pink
flush came into her cheeks, and a violet ray of recognition and
mischief darted from her eyes to his.  For it was Susy.



CHAPTER II.


When Brant returned to his hotel there was an augmented respect in
the voice of the clerk as he handed him a note with the remark that
it had been left by Senator Boompointer's coachman.  He had no
difficulty in recognizing Susy's peculiarly Brobdingnagian school-
girl hand.

"Kla'uns, I call it real mean!  I believe you just HOPED I wouldn't
know you.  If you're a bit like your old self you'll come right off
here--this very night!  I've got a big party on--but we can talk
somewhere between the acts!  Haven't I growed?  Tell me!  And my!
what a gloomy swell the young brigadier is!  The carriage will come
for you--so you have no excuse."

The effect of this childish note upon Brant was strangely out of
proportion to its triviality.  But then it was Susy's very
triviality--so expressive of her characteristic irresponsibility--
which had always affected him at such moments.  Again, as at
Robles, he felt it react against his own ethics.  Was she not right
in her delightful materialism?  Was she not happier than if she had
been consistently true to Mrs. Peyton, to the convent, to the
episode of her theatrical career, to Jim Hooker--even to himself?
And did he conscientiously believe that Hooker or himself had
suffered from her inconsistency?  No!  From all that he had heard,
she was a suitable helpmate to the senator, in her social
attractiveness, her charming ostentations, her engaging vanity that
disarmed suspicion, and her lack of responsibility even in her
partisanship.  Nobody ever dared to hold the senator responsible
for her promises, even while enjoying the fellowship of both, and
it is said that the worthy man singularly profited by it.  Looking
upon the invitation as a possible distraction to his gloomy
thoughts, Brant resolved to go.

The moon was high as the carriage whirled him out of the still
stifling avenues towards the Soldiers' Home--a sylvan suburb
frequented by cabinet ministers and the President--where the good
Senator had "decreed," like Kubla Khan, "a stately pleasure dome,"
to entertain his friends and partisans.  As they approached the
house, the trembling light like fireflies through the leaves, the
warm silence broken only by a military band playing a drowsy waltz
on the veranda, and the heavy odors of jessamine in the air,
thrilled Brant with a sense of shame as he thought of his old
comrades in the field.  But this was presently dissipated by the
uniforms that met him in the hall, with the presence of some of his
distinguished superiors.  At the head of the stairs, with a
circling background of the shining crosses and ribbons of the
diplomatic corps, stood Susy--her bare arms and neck glittering
with diamonds, her face radiant with childlike vivacity.  A
significant pressure of her little glove as he made his bow seemed
to be his only welcome, but a moment later she caught his arm.
"You've yet to know HIM," she said in a half whisper; "he thinks a
good deal of himself--just like Jim.  But he makes others believe
it, and that's where poor Jim slipped up."  She paused before the
man thus characteristically disposed of, and presented Brant.  It
was the man he had seen before--material, capable, dogmatic.  A
glance from his shrewd eyes--accustomed to the weighing of men's
weaknesses and ambitions--and a few hurried phrases, apparently
satisfied him that Brant was not just then important or available
to him, and the two men, a moment later, drifted easily apart.
Brant sauntered listlessly through the crowded rooms, half
remorsefully conscious that he had taken some irrevocable step, and
none the less assured by the presence of two or three reporters and
correspondents who were dogging his steps, or the glance of two or
three pretty women whose curiosity had evidently been aroused by
the singular abstraction of this handsome, distinguished, but
sardonic-looking officer.  But the next moment he was genuinely
moved.

A tall young woman had just glided into the centre of the room with
an indolent yet supple gracefulness that seemed familiar to him.  A
change in her position suddenly revealed her face.  It was Miss
Faulkner.  Previously he had known her only in the riding habit of
Confederate gray which she had at first affected, or in the light
muslin morning dress she had worn at Gray Oaks.  It seemed to him,
to-night, that the studied elegance of her full dress became her
still more; that the pretty willfulness of her chin and shoulders
was chastened and modified by the pearls round her fair throat.
Suddenly their eyes met; her face paled visibly; he fancied that
she almost leaned against her companion for support; then she met
his glance again with a face into which the color had as suddenly
rushed, but with eyes that seemed to be appealing to him even to
the point of pain and fright.  Brant was not conceited; he could
see that the girl's agitation was not the effect of any mere
personal influence in his recognition, but of something else.  He
turned hastily away; when he looked around again she was gone.

Nevertheless he felt filled with a vague irritation.  Did she think
him such a fool as to imperil her safety by openly recognizing her
without her consent?  Did she think that he would dare to presume
upon the service she had done him?  Or, more outrageous thought,
had she heard of his disgrace, known its cause, and feared that he
would drag her into a disclosure to save himself?  No, no; she
could not think that!  She had perhaps regretted what she had done
in a freak of girlish chivalry; she had returned to her old
feelings and partisanship; she was only startled at meeting the
single witness of her folly.  Well, she need not fear!  He would as
studiously avoid her hereafter, and she should know it.  And yet--
yes, there was a "yet."  For he could not forget--indeed, in the
past three weeks it had been more often before him than he cared to
think--that she was the one human being who had been capable of a
great act of self-sacrifice for him--her enemy, her accuser, the
man who had scarcely treated her civilly.  He was ashamed to
remember now that this thought had occurred to him at the bedside
of his wife--at the hour of her escape--even on the fatal slope on
which he had been struck down.  And now this fond illusion must go
with the rest--the girl who had served him so loyally was ashamed
of it!  A bitter smile crossed his face.

"Well, I don't wonder!  Here are all the women asking me who is
that good-looking Mephistopheles, with the burning eyes, who is
prowling around my rooms as if searching for a victim.  Why, you're
smiling for all the world like poor Jim when he used to do the Red
Avenger."

Susy's voice--and illustration--recalled him to himself.

"Furious I may be," he said with a gentler smile, although his eyes
still glittered, "furious that I have to wait until the one woman I
came to see--the one woman I have not seen for so long, while these
puppets have been nightly dancing before her--can give me a few
moments from them, to talk of the old days."

In his reaction he was quite sincere, although he felt a slight
sense of remorse as he saw the quick, faint color rise, as in those
old days, even through the to-night's powder of her cheek.

"That's like the old Kla'uns," she said, with a slight pressure of
his arm, "but we will not have a chance to speak until later.  When
they are nearly all gone, you'll take me to get a little refreshment,
and we'll have a chat in the conservatory.  But you must drop that
awfully wicked look and make yourself generally agreeable to those
women until then."

It was, perhaps, part of this reaction which enabled him to obey
his hostess' commands with a certain recklessness that, however,
seemed to be in keeping with the previous Satanic reputation he had
all unconsciously achieved.  The women listened to the cynical
flippancy of this good-looking soldier with an undisguised
admiration which in turn excited curiosity and envy from his own
sex.  He saw the whispered questioning, the lifted eyebrows,
scornful shrugging of shoulders--and knew that the story of his
disgrace was in the air.  But I fear this only excited him to
further recklessness and triumph.  Once he thought he recognized
Miss Faulkner's figure at a distance, and even fancied that she had
been watching him; but he only redoubled his attentions to the fair
woman beside him, and looked no more.

Yet he was glad when the guests began to drop off, the great
rooms thinned, and Susy, appearing on the arm of her husband,
coquettishly reminded him of his promise.

"For I want to talk to you of old times.  General Brant," she went
on, turning explanatorily to Boompointer, "married my adopted
mother in California--at Robles, a dear old place where I spent
my earliest years.  So, you see, we are sort of relations by
marriage," she added, with delightful naivete.

Hooker's own vainglorious allusion to his relations to the man
before him flashed across Brant's mind, but it left now only a
smile on his lips.  He felt he had already become a part of the
irresponsible comedy played around him.  Why should he resist, or
examine its ethics too closely?  He offered his arm to Susy as they
descended the stairs, but, instead of pausing in the supper-room,
she simply passed through it with a significant pressure on his
arm, and, drawing aside a muslin curtain, stepped into the moonlit
conservatory.  Behind the curtain there was a small rustic settee;
without releasing his arm she sat down, so that when he dropped
beside her, their hands met, and mutually clasped.

"Now, Kla'uns," she said, with a slight, comfortable shiver as she
nestled beside him, "it's a little like your chair down at old
Robles, isn't it?--tell me!  And to think it's five years ago!
But, Kla'uns, what's the matter?  You are changed," she said,
looking at his dark face in the moonlight, "or you have something
to tell me."

"I have."

"And it's something dreadful, I know!" she said, wrinkling her
brows with a pretty terror.  "Couldn't you pretend you had told it
to me, and let us go on just the same?  Couldn't you, Kla'uns?
Tell me!"

"I am afraid I couldn't," he said, with a sad smile.

"Is it about yourself, Kla'uns?  You know," she went on with
cheerful rapidity, "I know everything about you--I always did, you
know--and I don't care, and never did care, and it don't, and never
did, make the slightest difference to me.  So don't tell it, and
waste time, Kla'uns."

"It's not about me, but about my wife!" he said slowly.

Her expression changed slightly

"Oh, her!" she said after a pause.  Then, half-resignedly, "Go on,
Kla'uns."

He began.  He had a dozen times rehearsed to himself his miserable
story, always feeling it keenly, and even fearing that he might be
carried away by emotion or morbid sentiment in telling it to
another.  But, to his astonishment, he found himself telling it
practically, calmly, almost cynically, to his old playmate,
repressing the half devotion and even tenderness that had governed
him, from the time that his wife, disguised as the mulatto woman,
had secretly watched him at his office, to the hour that he had
passed through the lines.  He withheld only the incident of Miss
Faulkner's complicity and sacrifice.

"And she got away, after having kicked you out of your place,
Kla'uns?" said Susy, when he had ended.

Clarence stiffened beside her.  But he felt he had gone too far to
quarrel with his confidante.

"She went away.  I honestly believe we shall never meet again, or I
should not be telling you this!"

"Kla'uns," she said lightly, taking his hand again, "don't you
believe it!  She won't let you go.  You're one of those men that a
woman, when she's once hooked on to, won't let go of, even when she
believes she no longer loves him, or meets bigger and better men.
I reckon it's because you're so different from other men; maybe
there are so many different things about you to hook on to, and you
don't slip off as easily as the others.  Now, if you were like old
Peyton, her first husband, or like poor Jim, or even my Boompointer,
you'd be all right!  No, my boy, all we can do is to try to keep her
from getting at you here.  I reckon she won't trust herself in
Washington again in a hurry."

"But I cannot stay here; my career is in the field."

"Your career is alongside o' me, honey--and Boompointer.  But
nearer ME.  We'll fix all that.  I heard something about your being
in disgrace, but the story was that you were sweet on some secesh
girl down there, and neglected your business, Kla'uns.  But, Lordy!
to think it was only your own wife!  Never mind; we'll straighten
that out.  We've had worse jobs than that on.  Why, there was that
commissary who was buying up dead horses at one end of the field,
and selling them to the Government for mess beef at the other; and
there was that general who wouldn't make an attack when it rained;
and the other general--you know who I mean, Kla'uns--who wouldn't
invade the State where his sister lived; but we straightened them
out, somehow, and they were a heap worse than you.  We'll get you a
position in the war department here, one of the bureau offices,
where you keep your rank and your uniform--you don't look bad in
it, Kla'uns--on better pay.  And you'll come and see me, and we'll
talk over old times."

Brant felt his heart turn sick within him.  But he was at her mercy
now!  He said, with an effort,--

"But I've told you that my career--nay, my LIFE--now is in the
field."

"Don't you be a fool, Kla'uns, and leave it there!  You have done
your work of fighting--mighty good fighting, too,--and everybody
knows it.  You've earned a change.  Let others take your place."

He shuddered, as he remembered that his wife had made the same
appeal.  Was he a fool then, and these two women--so totally unlike
in everything--right in this?

"Come, Kla'uns," said Susy, relapsing again against his shoulder.
"Now talk to me!  You don't say what you think of me, of my home,
of my furniture, of my position--even of him!  Tell me!"

"I find you well, prosperous, and happy," he said, with a faint
smile.

"Is that all?  And how do I look?"

She turned her still youthful, mischievous face towards him in the
moonlight.  The witchery of her blue eyes was still there as of
old, the same frank irresponsibility beamed from them; her parted
lips seemed to give him back the breath of his youth.  He started,
but she did not.

"Susy, dear!"

It was her husband's voice.

"I quite forgot," the Senator went on, as he drew the curtain
aside, "that you are engaged with a friend; but Miss Faulkner is
waiting to say good-night, and I volunteered to find you."

"Tell her to wait a moment," said Susy, with an impatience that was
as undisguised as it was without embarrassment or confusion.

But Miss Faulkner, unconsciously following Mr. Boompointer, was
already upon them.  For a moment the whole four were silent,
although perfectly composed.  Senator Boompointer, unconscious of
any infelicity in his interruption, was calmly waiting.  Clarence,
opposed suddenly to the young girl whom he believed was avoiding
his recognition, rose, coldly imperturbable.  Miss Faulkner,
looking taller and more erect in the long folds of her satin cloak,
neither paled nor blushed, as she regarded Susy and Brant with a
smile of well-bred apology.

"I expect to leave Washington to-morrow, and may not be able to
call again," she said, "or I would not have so particularly pressed
a leave-taking upon you."

"I was talking with my old friend, General Brant," said Susy, more
by way of introduction than apology.

Brant bowed.  For an instant the clear eyes of Miss Faulkner
slipped icily across his as she made him an old-fashioned Southern
courtesy, and, taking Susy's arm, she left the room.  Brant did not
linger, but took leave of his host almost in the same breath.  At
the front door a well-appointed carriage of one of the Legations
had just rolled into waiting.  He looked back; he saw Miss
Faulkner, erect and looking like a bride in her gauzy draperies,
descending the stairs before the waiting servants.  He felt his
heart beat strangely.  He hesitated, recalled himself with an
effort, hurriedly stepped from the porch into the path, as he heard
the carriage door close behind him in the distance, and then felt
the dust from her horse's hoofs rise around him as she drove past
him and away.



CHAPTER III.


Although Brant was convinced as soon as he left the house that he
could not accept anything from the Boompointer influence, and that
his interview with Susy was fruitless, he knew that he must
temporize.  While he did not believe that his old playmate would
willingly betray him, he was uneasy when he thought of the vanity
and impulsiveness which might compromise him--or of a possible
jealousy that might seek revenge.  Yet he had no reason to believe
that Susy's nature was jealous, or that she was likely to have any
cause; but the fact remained that Miss Faulkner's innocent
intrusion upon their tete-a-tete affected him more strongly than
anything else in his interview with Susy.  Once out of the
atmosphere of that house, it struck him, too, that Miss Faulkner
was almost as much of an alien in it as himself.  He wondered what
she had been doing there.  Could it be possible that she was
obtaining information for the South?  But he rejected the idea as
quickly as it had occurred to him.  Perhaps there could be no
stronger proof of the unconscious influence the young girl already
had over him.

He remembered the liveries of the diplomatic carriage that had
borne her away, and ascertained without difficulty that her sister
had married one of the foreign ministers, and that she was a guest
in his house.  But he was the more astonished to hear that she and
her sister were considered to be Southern Unionists--and were
greatly petted in governmental circles for their sacrificing
fidelity to the flag.  His informant, an official in the State
Department, added that Miss Matilda might have been a good deal of
a madcap at the outbreak of the war--for the sisters had a brother
in the Confederate service--but that she had changed greatly, and,
indeed, within a month.  "For," he added, "she was at the White
House for the first time last week, and they say the President
talked more to her than to any other woman."

The indescribable sensation with which this simple information
filled Brant startled him more than the news itself.  Hope, joy,
fear, distrust, and despair, alternately distracted him.  He
recalled Miss Faulkner's almost agonizing glance of appeal to him in
the drawing-room at Susy's, and it seemed to be equally consistent
with the truth of what he had just heard--or some monstrous
treachery and deceit of which she might be capable.  Even now she
might be a secret emissary of some spy within the President's
family; she might have been in correspondence with some traitor in
the Boompointer clique, and her imploring glance only the result of
a fear of exposure.  Or, again, she might have truly recanted after
her escapade at Gray Oaks, and feared only his recollection of her
as go-between of spies.  And yet both of these presumptions were
inconsistent with her conduct in the conservatory.  It seemed
impossible that this impulsive woman, capable of doing what he had
himself known her to do, and equally sensitive to the shame or joy
of such impulses, should be the same conventional woman of society
who had so coldly recognized and parted from him.

But this interval of doubt was transitory.  The next day he
received a dispatch from the War Department, ordering him to report
himself for duty at once.  With a beating heart he hurried to the
Secretary.  But that official had merely left a memorandum with his
assistant directing General Brant to accompany some fresh levies to
a camp of "organization" near the front.  Brant felt a chill of
disappointment.  Duties of this kind had been left to dubious
regular army veterans, hurriedly displaced general officers, and
favored detrimentals.  But if it was not restoration, it was no
longer inaction, and it was at least a release from Washington.

It was also evidently the result of some influence--but hardly that
of the Boompointers, for he knew that Susy wished to keep him at
the Capital.  Was there another power at work to send him away from
Washington?  His previous doubts returned.  Nor were they dissipated
when the chief of the bureau placed a letter before him with the
remark that it had been entrusted to him by a lady with the request
that it should be delivered only into his own hands.

"She did not know your hotel address, but ascertained you were to
call here.  She said it was of some importance.  There is no mystery
about it, General," continued the official with a mischievous glance
at Brant's handsome, perplexed face, "although it's from a very
pretty woman--whom we all know."

"Mrs. Boompointer?" suggested Brant, with affected lightness.

It was a maladroit speech.  The official's face darkened.

"We have not yet become a Postal Department for the Boompointers,
General," he said dryly, "however great their influence elsewhere.
It was from rather a different style of woman--Miss Faulkner.  You
will receive your papers later at your hotel, and leave to-night."

Brant's unlucky slip was still potent enough to divert the official
attention, or he would have noticed the change in his visitor's
face, and the abruptness of his departure.

Once in the street, Brant tore off the envelope.  But beneath it
was another, on which was written in a delicate, refined hand:
"Please do not open this until you reach your destination."

Then she knew he was going!  And perhaps this was her influence?
All his suspicions again returned.  She knew he was going near the
lines, and his very appointment, through her power, might be a plot
to serve her and the enemy!  Was this letter, which she was
entrusting to him, the cover of some missive to her Southern
friends which she expected him to carry--perhaps as a return for
her own act of self-sacrifice?  Was this the appeal she had been
making to his chivalry, his gratitude, his honor?  The perspiration
stood in beads on his forehead.  What defect lay hidden in his
nature that seemed to make him an easy victim of these intriguing
women?  He had not even the excuse of gallantry; less susceptible
to the potencies of the sex than most men, he was still compelled
to bear that reputation.  He remembered his coldness to Miss
Faulkner in the first days of their meeting, and her effect upon
his subalterns.  Why had she selected him from among them--when she
could have modeled the others like wax to her purposes?  Why?  And
yet with the question came a possible answer that he hardly dared
to think of--that in its very vagueness seemed to fill him with a
stimulating thrill and hopefulness.  He quickened his pace.  He
would take the letter, and yet be master of himself when the time
came to open it.

That time came three days later, in his tent at Three Pines
Crossing.  As he broke open the envelope, he was relieved to find
that it contained no other inclosure, and seemed intended only for
himself.  It began abruptly:--

"When you read this, you will understand why I did not speak to you
when we met last night; why I even dreaded that you might speak to
me, knowing, as I did, what I ought to tell you at that place and
moment--something you could only know from me.  I did not know you
were in Washington, although I knew you were relieved; I had no way
of seeing you or sending to you before, and I only came to Mrs.
Boompointer's party in the hope of hearing news of you.

"You know that my brother was captured by your pickets in company
with another officer.  He thinks you suspected the truth--that he
and his friend were hovering near your lines to effect the escape
of the spy.  But he says that, although they failed to help her,
she did escape, or was passed through the lines by your connivance.
He says that you seemed to know her, that from what Rose--the
mulatto woman--told him, you and she were evidently old friends.
I would not speak of this, nor intrude upon your private affairs,
only that I think you ought to know that I had no knowledge of it
when I was in your house, but believed her to be a stranger to you.
You gave me no intimation that you knew her, and I believed that
you were frank with me.  But I should not speak of this at all--for
I believe that it would have made no difference to me in repairing
the wrong that I thought I had done you--only that, as I am forced
by circumstances to tell you the terrible ending of this story, you
ought to know it all.

"My brother wrote to me that the evening after you left, the
burying party picked up the body of what they believed to be a
mulatto woman lying on the slope.  It was not Rose, but the body of
the very woman--the real and only spy--whom you had passed through
the lines.  She was accidentally killed by the Confederates in the
first attack upon you, at daybreak.  But only my brother and his
friend recognized her through her blackened face and disguise, and
on the plea that she was a servant of one of their friends, they
got permission from the division commander to take her away, and
she was buried by her friends and among her people in the little
cemetery of Three Pines Crossing, not far from where you have gone.
My brother thought that I ought to tell you this: it seems that he
and his friend had a strange sympathy for you in what they appear
to know or guess of your relations with that woman, and I think he
was touched by what he thought was your kindness and chivalry to
him on account of his sister.  But I do not think he ever knew, or
will know, how great is the task that he has imposed upon me.

"You know now, do you not, WHY I did not speak to you when we
first met; it seemed so impossible to do it in an atmosphere and a
festivity that was so incongruous with the dreadful message I was
charged with.  And when I had to meet you later--perhaps I may have
wronged you--but it seemed to me that you were so preoccupied and
interested with other things that I might perhaps only be wearying
you with something you cared little for, or perhaps already knew
and had quickly forgotten.

"I had been wanting to say something else to you when I had got rid
of my dreadful message.  I do not know if you still care to hear
it.  But you were once generous enough to think that I had done you
a service in bringing a letter to your commander.  Although I know
better than anybody else the genuine devotion to your duty that
made you accept my poor service, from all that I can hear, you have
never had the credit of it.  Will you not try me again?  I am more
in favor here, and I might yet be more successful in showing your
superiors how true you have been to your trust, even if you have
little faith in your friend, Matilda Faulkner."

For a long time he remained motionless, with the letter in his
hand.  Then he arose, ordered his horse, and galloped away.

There was little difficulty in finding the cemetery of Three Pines
Crossing--a hillside slope, hearsed with pine and cypress, and
starred with white crosses, that in the distance looked like
flowers.  Still less was there in finding the newer marble shaft
among the older lichen-spotted slabs, which bore the simple words:
"Alice Benham, Martyr."  A few Confederate soldiers, under still
plainer and newer wooden headstones, carved only with initials, lay
at her feet.  Brant sank on his knees beside the grave, but he was
shocked to see that the base of the marble was stained with the red
pollen of the fateful lily, whose blossoms had been heaped upon her
mound, but whose fallen petals lay dark and sodden in decay.

How long he remained there he did not know.  And then a solitary
bugle from the camp seemed to summon him, as it had once before
summoned him, and he went away--as he had gone before--to a
separation that he now knew was for all time.

Then followed a month of superintendence and drill, and the
infusing into the little camp under his instruction the spirit
which seemed to be passing out of his own life forever.  Shut in by
alien hills on the borderland of the great struggle, from time to
time reports reached him of the bitter fighting, and almost
disastrous successes of his old division commander.  Orders came
from Washington to hurry the preparation of his raw levies to the
field, and a faint hope sprang up in his mind.  But following it
came another dispatch ordering his return to the Capital.

He reached it with neither hope nor fear--so benumbed had become
his spirit under this last trial, and what seemed to be now the
mockery of this last sacrifice to his wife.  Though it was no
longer a question of her life and safety, he knew that he could
still preserve her memory from stain by keeping her secret, even
though its divulgings might clear his own.  For that reason, he had
even hesitated to inform Susy of her death, in the fear that, in
her thoughtless irresponsibility and impulsiveness, she might be
tempted to use it in his favor.  He had made his late appointment a
plea for her withholding any present efforts to assist him.  He
even avoided the Boompointers' house, in what he believed was
partly a duty to the memory of his wife.  But he saw no inconsistency
in occasionally extending his lonely walks to the vicinity of a
foreign Legation, or in being lifted with a certain expectation at
the sight of its liveries on the Avenue.  There was a craving for
sympathy in his heart, which Miss Faulkner's letter had awakened.

Meantime, he had reported himself for duty at the War Department--
with little hope, however, in that formality.  But he was surprised
the next day when the chief of the bureau informed him that his
claim was before the President.

"I was not aware that I had presented any claim," he said, a little
haughtily.

The bureau chief looked up with some surprise.  This quiet,
patient, reserved man had puzzled him once or twice before.

"Perhaps I should say 'case,' General," he said, drily.  "But the
personal interest of the highest executive in the land strikes me
as being desirable in anything."

"I only mean that I have obeyed the orders of the department in
reporting myself here, as I have done," said Brant, with less
feeling, but none the less firmness; "and I should imagine it was
not the duty of a soldier to question them.  Which I fancy a
'claim' or a 'case' would imply."

He had no idea of taking this attitude before, but the
disappointments of the past month, added to this first official
notice of his disgrace, had brought forward that dogged, reckless,
yet half-scornful obstinacy that was part of his nature.

The official smiled.

"I suppose, then, you are waiting to hear from the President," he
said drily.

"I am awaiting orders from the department," returned Brant quietly,
"but whether they originate in the President as commander-in-chief,
or not--it is not for me to inquire."

Even when he reached his hotel this half-savage indifference which
had taken the place of his former incertitude had not changed.  It
seemed to him that he had reached the crisis of his life where he
was no longer a free agent, and could wait, superior alike to
effort or expectation.  And it was with a merely dispassionate
curiosity that he found a note the next morning from the
President's private secretary, informing him that the President
would see him early that day.

A few hours later he was ushered through the public rooms of the
White House to a more secluded part of the household.  The
messenger stopped before a modest door and knocked.  It was opened
by a tall figure--the President himself.  He reached out a long arm
to Brant, who stood hesitatingly on the threshold, grasped his
hand, and led him into the room.  It had a single, large,
elaborately draped window and a handsome medallioned carpet, which
contrasted with the otherwise almost appalling simplicity of the
furniture.  A single plain angular desk, with a blotting pad and a
few sheets of large foolscap upon it, a waste-paper basket and four
plain armchairs, completed the interior with a contrast as simple
and homely as its long-limbed, black-coated occupant.  Releasing
the hand of the general to shut a door which opened into another
apartment, the President shoved an armchair towards him and sank
somewhat wearily into another before the desk.  But only for a
moment; the long shambling limbs did not seem to adjust themselves
easily to the chair; the high narrow shoulders drooped to find a
more comfortable lounging attitude, shifted from side to side, and
the long legs moved dispersedly.  Yet the face that was turned
towards Brant was humorous and tranquil.

"I was told I should have to send for you if I wished to see you,"
he said smilingly.

Already mollified, and perhaps again falling under the previous
influence of this singular man, Brant began somewhat hesitatingly
to explain.

But the President checked him gently,--

"You don't understand.  It was something new to my experience here
to find an able-bodied American citizen with an honest genuine
grievance who had to have it drawn from him like a decayed tooth.
But you have been here before.  I seem to remember your face."

Brant's reserve had gone.  He admitted that he had twice sought an
audience--but--

"You dodged the dentist!  That was wrong."  As Brant made a slight
movement of deprecation the President continued: "I understand!
Not from fear of giving pain to yourself but to others.  I don't
know that THAT is right, either.  A certain amount of pain must be
suffered in this world--even by one's enemies.  Well, I have looked
into your case, General Brant."  He took up a piece of paper from
his desk, scrawled with two or three notes in pencil.  "I think
this is the way it stands.  You were commanding a position at Gray
Oaks when information was received by the department that, either
through neglect or complicity, spies were passing through your
lines.  There was no attempt to prove your neglect; your orders,
the facts of your personal care and precaution, were all before the
department.  But it was also shown that your wife, from whom you
were only temporarily separated, was a notorious secessionist;
that, before the war, you yourself were suspected, and that,
therefore, you were quite capable of evading your own orders, which
you may have only given as a blind.  On this information you were
relieved by the department of your command.  Later on it was
discovered that the spy was none other than your own wife,
disguised as a mulatto; that, after her arrest by your own
soldiers, you connived at her escape--and this was considered
conclusive proof of--well, let us say--your treachery."

"But I did not know it was my wife until she was arrested," said
Brant impulsvely.

The President knitted his eyebrows humorously.

"Don't let us travel out of the record, General.  You're as bad as
the department.  The question was one of your personal treachery,
but you need not accept the fact that you were justly removed
because your wife was a spy.  Now, General, I am an old lawyer, and
I don't mind telling you that in Illinois we wouldn't hang a yellow
dog on that evidence before the department.  But when I was asked
to look into the matter by your friends, I discovered something of
more importance to you.  I had been trying to find a scrap of
evidence that would justify the presumption that you had sent
information to the enemy.  I found that it was based upon the fact
of the enemy being in possession of knowledge at the first battle
at Gray Oaks, which could only have been obtained from our side,
and which led to a Federal disaster; that you, however, retrieved
by your gallantry.  I then asked the secretary if he was prepared
to show that you had sent the information with that view, or that
you had been overtaken by a tardy sense of repentance.  He preferred
to consider my suggestion as humorous.  But the inquiry led to my
further discovery that the only treasonable correspondence actually
in evidence was found upon the body of a trusted Federal officer,
and had been forwarded to the division commander.  But there was no
record of it in the case."

"Why, I forwarded it myself," said Brant eagerly.

"So the division commander writes," said the President, smiling,
"and he forwarded it to the department.  But it was suppressed in
some way.  Have you any enemies, General Brant?"

"Not that I know of."

"Then you probably have.  You are young and successful.  Think of
the hundred other officers who naturally believe themselves better
than you are, and haven't a traitorous wife.  Still, the department
may have made an example of you for the benefit of the only man who
couldn't profit by it."

"Might it not have been, sir, that this suppression was for the
good report of the service--as the chief offender was dead?"

"I am glad to hear you say so, General, for it is the argument I
have used successfully in behalf of your wife."

"Then you know it all, sir?" said Brant after a gloomy pause.

"All, I think.  Come, General, you seemed just now to be uncertain
about your enemies.  Let me assure you, you need not be so in
regard to your friends."

"I dare to hope I have found one, sir," said Brant with almost
boyish timidity.

"Oh, not me!" said the President, with a laugh of deprecation.
"Some one much more potent."

"May I know his name, Mr. President?"

"No, for it is a woman.  You were nearly ruined by one, General.  I
suppose it's quite right that you should be saved by one.  And, of
course, irregularly."

"A woman!" echoed Brant.

"Yes; one who was willing to confess herself a worse spy than your
wife--a double traitor--to save you!  Upon my word, General, I
don't know if the department was far wrong; a man with such an
alternately unsettling and convincing effect upon a woman's highest
political convictions should be under some restraint.  Luckily the
department knows nothing of it."

"Nor would any one else have known from me," said Brant eagerly.
"I trust that she did not think--that you, sir, did not for an
instant believe that I"--

"Oh dear, no!  Nobody would have believed you!  It was her free
confidence to me.  That was what made the affair so difficult to
handle.  For even her bringing your dispatch to the division
commander looked bad for you; and you know he even doubted its
authenticity."

"Does she--does Miss Faulkner know the spy was my wife?" hesitated
Brant.

The President twisted himself in his chair, so as to regard Brant
more gravely with his deep-set eyes, and then thoughtfully rubbed
his leg.

"Don't let us travel out of the record, General," he said after a
pause.  But as the color surged into Brant's cheek he raised his
eyes to the ceiling, and said, in half-humorous recollection,--

"No, I think THAT fact was first gathered from your other friend--
Mr. Hooker."

"Hooker!" said Brant, indignantly; "did he come here?"

"Pray don't destroy my faith in Mr. Hooker, General," said the
President, in half-weary, half-humorous deprecation.  "Don't tell
me that any of his inventions are TRUE!  Leave me at least that
magnificent liar--the one perfectly intelligible witness you have.
For from the time that he first appeared here with a grievance and
a claim for a commission, he has been an unspeakable joy to me and
a convincing testimony to you.  Other witnesses have been partisans
and prejudiced; Mr. Hooker was frankly true to himself.  How else
should I have known of the care you took to disguise yourself, save
the honor of your uniform, and run the risk of being shot as an
unknown spy at your wife's side, except from his magnificent
version of HIS part in it?  How else should I have known the story
of your discovery of the Californian conspiracy, except from his
supreme portrayal of it, with himself as the hero?  No, you must
not forget to thank Mr. Hooker when you meet him.  Miss Faulkner is
at present more accessible; she is calling on some members of my
family in the next room.  Shall I leave you with her?"

Brant rose with a pale face and a quickly throbbing heart as the
President, glancing at the clock, untwisted himself from the chair,
and shook himself out full length, and rose gradually to his feet.

"Your wish for active service is granted, General Brant," he said
slowly, "and you will at once rejoin your old division commander,
who is now at the head of the Tenth Army Corps.  But," he said,
after a deliberate pause, "there are certain rules and regulations
of your service that even I cannot, with decent respect to your
department, override.  You will, therefore, understand that you
cannot rejoin the army in your former position."

The slight flush that came to Brant's cheek quickly passed.  And
there was only the unmistakable sparkle of renewed youth in his
frank eyes as he said--

"Let me go to the front again, Mr. President, and I care not HOW."

The President smiled, and, laying his heavy hand on Brant's
shoulder, pushed him gently towards the door of the inner room.

"I was only about to say," he added, as he opened the door, "that
it would be necessary for you to rejoin your promoted commander as
a major-general.  And," he continued, lifting his voice, as he
gently pushed his guest into the room, "he hasn't even thanked me
for it, Miss Faulkner!"

The door closed behind him, and he stood for a moment dazed, and
still hearing the distant voice of the President, in the room he
had just quitted, now welcoming a new visitor.  But the room before
him, opening into a conservatory, was empty, save for a single
figure that turned, half timidly, half mischievously, towards him.
The same quick, sympathetic glance was in both their faces; the
same timid, happy look in both their eyes.  He moved quickly to her
side.

"Then you knew that--that--woman was my wife?" he said, hurriedly,
as he grasped her hand.

She cast a half-appealing look at his face--a half-frightened one
around the room and at the open door beyond.

"Let us," she said faintly, "go into the conservatory."

        .        .        .        .        .        .

It is but a few years ago that the veracious chronicler of these
pages moved with a wondering crowd of sightseers in the gardens of
the White House.  The war cloud had long since lifted and vanished;
the Potomac flowed peacefully by and on to where once lay the broad
plantation of a great Confederate leader--now a national cemetery
that had gathered the soldier dead of both sections side by side in
equal rest and honor--and the great goddess once more looked down
serenely from the dome of the white Capitol.  The chronicler's
attention was attracted by an erect, handsome soldierly-looking
man, with a beard and moustache slightly streaked with gray,
pointing out the various objects of interest to a boy of twelve or
fourteen at his side.

"Yes; although, as I told you, this house belongs only to the
President of the United States and his family," said the gentleman,
smilingly, "in that little conservatory I proposed to your mother."

"Oh! Clarence, how can you!" said the lady, reprovingly, "you know
it was LONG after that!"





End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Clarence, by Bret Harte