The Iron Game: A Tale of the War

by Henry F. Keenan

CHAPTER XXXI.

TWO BLADES OF THE SAME STEEL.

It was too late to follow up the discovery that night. Kate, after a feverish rest, set out early in the morning. She went first to Acredale, where she could get her own equipage and driver. The tenants of the house did not know her. She rang boldly at the door, and when a maid answered, quite taken aback by the girlish figure in deep black, Kate asked, confidently:

"I want to see the sick man, Mr. Jones."

"Yes'm, come right in. This way, please, ma'am." The girl led the way up a flight of stairs, but if she had been part of the balustrade Kate could not have been more immovable. Whom was she about to see? Jack, wan, emaciated, on the verge of the grave? They had said in Washington that the journey would kill him; was it to that end her relentless father had persisted in the removal? Was she about to see the dying brought to death's door by her own flesh and blood? She reeled against the stair-post and brought her veil over her face. The girl had turned above and was waiting in wonder. With a desperate gathering together of her relaxed forces, she mounted the stairway. In the corridor the girl turned to a closed doorway and knocked lightly. There was no sound within; but the door swung open, and Elisha Boone stood on the threshold. He did not in the dim light observe the figure in black, but, looking at the maid, said, softly:

"What's wanted, Sarah?"

"A young lady to see Mr. Jones, sir," and, stepping slightly aside for
Kate to enter, the father recognized the visitor.

"You here, Kate? What does this mean?"

With a great throb of joy she flung herself into his arms; too happy, too relieved to take into consideration the defeat of her purpose involved in the meeting. For an instant she lost all thought of anything but that her estranged parent was in her arms, that she would not let him quit her sight again, that her pleading would keep him from any act that could cause her or any one else unhappiness.

"Ah, father, I'm so relieved, so glad! I was miserable, and did not know where you were. I—I will not let you leave me again."

"But my child, you must not be here; this is a house of sickness; there is dangerous illness here."

"It's no more dangerous for me than for you. I know who is here." She looked archly at him, as he started in surprise. "I will help nurse Mr. Jones." She said this with immense knowingness in her manner as she squeezed the astonished man to her heart. The maid meanwhile had retreated to a safe distance, where she lurked in covert to make report of the extraordinary goings on.

"Impossible, Kate; you must not be here. I will not have it; you must go." His voice grew stern. "You must go, I say, Kate; you must go down-stairs this instant."

"Come, Boone, I say, this isn't fair; let the lady come in if she wants to see valor laid low." Boone, who had been insensibly moving Kate from the open doorway, caught her eye fixed on the room, and looking over his shoulder at these jocular words he saw Jones leaning against the post, a wan smile on his face. Boone turned, almost flinging Kate from him, and, fairly lifting the invalid, carried him back into the room.

"This is madness; you are in no condition to rise. I won't be responsible for your life if you persist in this course."

"So much trouble off your hands, old man. I'll be more use to you dead than living. Better let me blow my own flame out. It won't burn long at best or worst."

In the overwhelming revulsion of feeling brought about by the actual sight of Jones, Kate stood, interdicted, in the corridor, uncertain what to do. She heard the man's words and shuddered at the bantering levity with which he spoke of his own death. Who could it be? It was not Jack, as she had feared and hoped. But he must know something of Jack. She must speak with him. How? It would not do to irritate her father. She caught Boone's almost whispered words:

"I tell you, Jones, you shall be brought about, but you know the danger of seeing any Acredale people. My daughter knows you—knows the Perleys. I should think that would be reason enough why you should not be seen by her."

"Oh, I don't mind; the sight of a pretty girl is the best medicine I know of. I'd risk all Acredale for that."

Kate turned softly and waited at the foot of the stairs for her father.
He came presently, looking worried and embarrassed.

"Now don't go to imagining mysteries here. This is a man who has been on my hands a good many years. He is an irreclaimable spendthrift. He was in other days a man of repute and station. I am interested in him, through old ties, since the days we were boys."

"The carriage is here, papa; won't you come home with me?"

"Yes; you get into the carriage."

He reappeared presently, the face of a strange woman, that Kate had not seen, peering over his shoulder into the carriage as he came down the steps. Kate instantly divined that he had been warning the landlady against admitting strangers to the sick man's room. During the drive home Kate strove to reassert her old dominion over the moody figure at her side. It was useless. As the carriage stopped at the door he turned toward her and said, not unkindly:

"Daughter, there are some things I know better how to manage than you do. You have been spying on your father. This is another count in the long score of grudges I owe the Sprague tribe and their scoundrel son. Understand me clearly, my child; you must not speak of this matter again. The whole business will soon be at an end; that end is in my hands, and no power this side the grave can alter a fact in the outcome. You are very dear to me; you are all I have left in the world; you must trust me, and you must believe that I am doing everything for the best. Try to think that the world is not coming to an end because I insist on having my own way for once."

Nothing but the sense of having giving hostages to good behavior rather than honor upheld Kate in the line she had marked out for herself. She was not, in the modern sense of the word, a strong-minded young woman, this sorely beset champion of the overborne. She hadn't even the perversity of the sex in love. Chivalrously as she loved the lost soldier, she loved her father with that old-fashioned veneration which made her see all that he did with the moral indistinctness, without which there could not be the perfect filial devotion that makes the family a union in good report and evil. She had not even that, by no means repellent, secondary egoism which upholds us in doing ungrateful things that abstract good may follow. Opposition, which becomes delightful when we can call it persecution, had no charm for her. If her father had suddenly adopted the rôle of the stern parent in novels and ordered her to her chamber, Kate would have regarded it as a joke, and felt rather relieved that she could thus escape the pledge given to the Spragues. But, as it was, she felt morally bound by her promise to Olympia; and, though she realized dimly that her instrumentality was slowly involving her father in a coil of unloveliness, she resolutely braced herself for the worst. In spite of herself she had believed in conquering her father's severity and changing his mind. She had rescued him from revenges quite as dear to him as this, at least so far as she understood it, forgetting that her father believed himself to be pursuing the deliberate murderer of his son. When we have achieved a victory over our own less noble impulses and put the sophistries that misled us behind us, it is impossible to realize that others have not the same vision, the same mind as our own. Kate had accused Jack of cold-blooded murder. She had reasoned herself out of that hateful spirit, and, forgetting that her father had not the vital force of love to act as a fulcrum, she could not quite comprehend how difficult it was to shift the wrathful burden in his mind. She had gone too far to recede now with honor. Olympia had trusted her, had indeed given over into her hands the active work of finding the strangely lost clew of Jack's whereabouts. Perhaps for her father's sake it was better that she should be the instrument. She might be able to dissemble his intervention, shield him from obloquy—if, as she feared, he was responsible for anything doubtful.

She knew her father too well to suppose that he would flinch from any measure he had proposed to himself. She knew that she need not count any further upon her accustomed powers of persuasion. His own words were final on that score. If she could only learn his intentions! If she could be sure that he was ulteriorly shaping events against Jack—was acquainted with his whereabouts—she would have known exactly what to do. But, pilloried in doubt, shackled by the dread of exposing him in some hateful malevolence which would forever disgrace him in the community, she hardly dared stir, though she felt that every hour's delay was a new peril to Jack in some way. The more she thought of the scene of the morning, the surer she felt that Jones—or Mr. Dick, as her father sometimes called him—was in some way an instrument in the paternal scheme. If she could but see Jones ten minutes! Her father, she well knew, had guarded against that. Whom could she send in her place? Ah! there was the double check. She couldn't expose her father to a stranger; yet if her apprehensions were grounded on anything more substantial than fear, strangers must in time know all. Could Merry be made use of? No—that would not do. The libertine tone of the invalid, his impudent allusion to herself, convinced Kate that a man must be her agent, if any one were to be. But what man did she know? If she sent any of the servants, her father would recognize them, and the attempt fail. She had trusted Elkins. He seemed an honest, incurious lad, just the one to be trusted in the business. She could invent a fable which would satisfy his ready credulity without compromising her father. It was plain that he was the only resource. She dressed at once and returned to the Alburn. Thence she dispatched a note to Elkins, begging him to call at his earliest leisure. While waiting his return, she wrote a letter to be handed to Jones. This was a work of no little ingenuity, forced as she was to avoid all allusion to her father and the scene of the morning. When completed, this stroke of the conspiracy ran:

"DEAR SIR: A mother and sister who have exhausted all official sources in vain to get trace of a lost son and brother, John Sprague of the Caribees, have reason to believe that you can give them a clew to his whereabouts. Will you therefore kindly confide in the bearer of this letter, giving him by word of mouth such facts as will enable John Sprague's relatives to work intelligently in the search for him, living or dead?

"Very truly yours,

"KATHERINE BOONE."

It was hardly written when Elkins himself appeared, radiant with satisfaction and blushing like a peony under lamplight.

"Yeour note came just in th' nick o' time. I have leave of absence for twenty-four hours, and was just goin' inter teown."

"If you can spare me the day, I have a very important matter I think you can attend to for me. I want you to go to the sick man Jones. You must see before entering whether he is alone or not. I don't know how you can find out, but you can invent some way. If you see the man who brought him from Washington, you are not to enter. But if you find that he is not in the house, ask boldly for Jones, and when you reach him hand him this note. He will give you an answer, and you must be careful not to lose a word, for life depends on the accuracy of your report. I fancy that your regimentals and hospital badge can gain you admission, if, as I have reason to believe, there are orders to refuse strangers admission. I depend on you to overcome any difficulty you may meet. If you knew how much depends upon it, I'm sure you would not be baffled by anything less than force."

The big blue eyes were fairly bulging, like two monster morning-glories, as Elkins, putting the note carefully in his jacket pocket, said, softly:

"Ef I don't get thet 'ere letter into Jones's hands, you may have me drummed out o' camp by the mule-drivers."

"I believe you, and trust you. I shall be here to-morrow morning early, and shall hope to hear something from you. Good-by."

"Good-by, miss. Just you make up your mind I am goin' to do what you command."

When she reached home she found her father in the library. He looked at her inquiringly as she came over and kissed him.

"I have been in town all day, and am run out."

"Still plotting?"

"Yes, still plotting."

"You're wasting your time, my dear. You'll know all you care to soon enough, if you'll just keep quiet."

"Yes; but I can't. I want to know all you know, and I want to know it now."

"All I know wouldn't be much, according to the Spragues, who gave me my status in this town, long ago, as an ignoramus."

"Perhaps you were then, papa."

"Yes; I hadn't been schooled fifteen years by my accomplished daughter."

"A lie is truth to those who only tell the truth."

"What does that mean?"

"It's simple enough—a home-made epigram. People who tell nothing but the truth are easiest made to believe a lie. The Spragues had heard of you as ignorant, and believed it. You can't blame them for that."

"I don't blame them because it was a lie. I blame them because it was the truth. I don't care a straw how many lies are told about me—it's the ill-natured truth I object to."

"I'm afraid that you will have a hard time in life if you like lies better than the truth."

"I didn't say that."

"Then I don't understand English."

"You don't understand me."

"Ah, yes I do, papa. I do understand you. I know that at this moment you are doing something that you are ashamed of—something that later you will bitterly repent. You are carrying on now through pride what you began in wrath. Stop where you are. The dead can not be avenged. That's a barbarous code. Remember, in all the petty irritations of the past, when you have been hurt by your neighbors, you were never so triumphant as when you surprised those who injured you by a magnanimous return—"

"There, I made an agreement with you that we should not speak of these things. I mean it. I find that you take advantage of me. I shall be banished from the house if you do not keep to your bargain."

Kate sighed. She had hoped that the early banter was paving the way for a reconciliation. She took up some work and tried to busy her hands.

"Suppose you read me something? You haven't read in an age."

"What shall it be?"

"Oh, something from Dickens—anything you like."

"Very well, I shall show you a counterfeit presentment of yourself," and, with an arch-smile, she began to read from The Chimes.

He listened soberly until the last page was turned, and then, rising, said abstractedly:

"I sha'n't see you for a few days. I wish you would remain at home as much as possible. Get some of the neighbors' girls to keep you company, if you're lonesome."

"Oh, I shall not be lonesome. I shall have too much to do—too much to think about."

He laughed. "You are enough like your father, my girl, to pass for him.
Very well, you'll be penitent enough when I come back."

He was gone in the morning, as he had said, and she was free to keep her appointment with Elkins. He was waiting for her when she readied the hotel.

"Well?" she cried, breathlessly.

"I saw him."

She seized the blushing lad's two hands. "Ah, you splendid follow! And then?—"

"He wrote this note for you," and he handed her an envelope with her own name written on it in an uneven, uncertain scrawl. She tore it open and read:

"DEAR MADAM: I can not understand why there should be any difficulty in finding what became of Sprague and his party. We all reached the lines together, but, as I was hit by a bullet in the head at the moment of rescue, I knew nothing of their movements after reaching the Union lines. I, too, am interested in the young man. I should like to see you or some of his friends at once, as I suspect foul play of some sort.

"Obediently yours,

"JONES."

"Did you get to him without trouble?" Kate asked, keenly, disappointed by the result of all this strategy.

"I made them believe I was on hospital business. I showed them a large official envelope, and they let me go up. Jones told me to tell you that he would see you there in the parlor if you would come; that he is unable to leave the house, or he would come to see you."

"Can you take me there now?"

"I have four hours of my leave still. It does not expire until two o'clock."

"Then we will go at once. Will you call a carriage?"

While he was gone, Kate read the note again. She was more puzzled than ever. The man wrote as if he had no idea that Jack was not easily traceable, yet all the Spragues' money and influence had been spent in vain. He expected her. Where could her father be? He wrote as though he had no idea that he had been virtually a prisoner. When she reached the house, the servant made no difficulty in admitting her. Elkins remained outside in the vehicle, with an admonition from Kate to remain unseen unless she called him. Jones, the shadow of the burly soldier we saw in the famous escape, was seated in a deep, reclining chair, and, as Kate entered, rose feebly.

"Pray, don't rise, don't disturb yourself in the least. I will sit here near you, and we can talk, if it won't make you ill."

"No. It isn't talking that troubles me—but never mind that. Your note has pulled me down a good deal. I was given to understand that the boys were home and all right."

"The boys?"

"Jack and young Perley."

"Who gave you—who told you that?"

"Your father. He is the only person I have talked with since I got my wits back."

Kate drew back with a shuddering horror.

"Are you quite sure, Mr.—Mr. Jones that my father told you that?"

"Perfectly certain. Do you suppose that I would not have taken measures to find out where my own—I mean where friends were? These boys saved me from prison once and from a death nearly as dreadful as Libby. Could I be indifferent to them?"

"But why should papa tell you they were safe, when—when our hearts have been tortured? Ah! I see. He wanted to spare you the anxiety. Ah! yes. He knew that you would fret and worry, and that you could not recover under the strain." Kate's heart swelled with a triumphant revulsion. She had vilely suspected without cause. She must now do justice. Jones eyed her pensively, holding his head with both his hands.

"Nothing has been heard of the boys since when?"

"Nothing directly since the escape from Richmond. Miss Sprague brought that news, and about the same time a paragraph in the Herald announced that prisoners from Richmond had reached the Union lines on the Warrick."

"When was that?"

"Late in November."

"Yes, I was one of them. I escaped from Richmond. Jack and young Perley got me out of the tobacco warehouse. We reached the Warrick after a hard week of marching and hiding, and the boys were alive and well when we reached the Union outpost. I was last to cross the bridge, and as I plunged into the thick bushes a bullet struck me, I knew no more until I found myself here. I had agents at Fort Monroe waiting for me. They probably forwarded me at once. But I don't understand how there can be any difficulty in tracing the two boys. Haven't they written?"

"Not a line, not a word concerning them has been heard. Mrs. Sprague sent agents so soon as the Herald paragraph was shown to Olympia. They are in Washington now on the quest. It was there we got track of you—before you were sent here,"'

"Why was I sent here?"

Kate was about to speak. Again the shadow of her first fear—again the dread of some malevolent purpose on her father's part—choked her speech.

"I—I—don't know," she faltered.

"Who came with me?"

"My father."

"Ah!" Jones's eyes were penetrating her now. She felt the questioning in them, and turned her face to the clinging folds of the veil.

"Miss Boone, you seem to be deeply interested in these boys. Are you really their friend?"

"Ah, believe me, I am heart and soul their friend!"

"Does your father know it?"

"Yes: he knows that I am seeking them."

"Does he approve your search?"

"No, he does not."

"Good. Now listen. We have short time to work in. You have a carriage outside. Your father will be here any moment. I could never keep from him my indignation and even distrust. I shall get into that carriage with you, and you must conceal me somewhere and give me time to set the proper machinery in motion to find these boys. There is no other way. Your father has some reason for keeping their whereabouts concealed. I may know the purpose and I may not. The boys may have been killed in the volley that struck me. It will require a mere telegram to find out. I know whom to address, but I must be where I can use trusted agents. I have no money. You can, I hope, provide me with that, or the Spragues if you can't."

He spoke with a flush deepening on his face, and arose with something like vigor.

"Ample means—you shall have any sum you need," Kate said, handing him a well-filled purse.

"Good—I have one or two articles in my room. I will fetch them and follow you to the carriage."

Ten minutes later the carriage was whirling over the broad road to Warchester. By Jones's advice it was stopped at the hospital. Here he proposed remaining for the night, to mislead suspicion if any one had taken the precaution to follow.

"I will remain with our friend Elkins to-night, as you suggest," Jones said; "to-morrow I will send you word of my whereabouts, and you may expect to have news of the boys within the week."

"My address will be in Washington," Kate said. "I shall go at once to the Spragues. They have been there, as I told you, to seek every possible source of information. I left them to follow you, hoping that through you I should find the missing."

"You made no mistake. I shall find them. You can tell your friends that," and he added, with a gleam of savage malice, "God help the man that has raised the weight of a feather against them, for he has put a heavy hurt on me if he has harmed them!"

Kate shuddered. Was she never to emerge from this hideous circle of vengeful hatred—this condition of passionate vendetta—where men were seeking each other's harm? On reaching home she addressed a note to her father explaining frankly that she had entered into communication with Jones; that who had been pained by all that she had heard; that the inquiry had now passed out of her hands and was in that of the authorities, and begging him to drop any participation he might have meditated In a late letter Olympia had given good news of her mother, saying that Kate could return with safety, and, informing her father of this, Kate bade him good-by for a time.

When Kate reached Washington she found Mrs. Sprague convalescent, but painfully feeble. The poor mother reproached herself for the interruption of the search, and implored the two girls to begin again without a moment's delay. Kate gave her as much hope as she dared. She hinted something of the outlines of what she had done and the new agent in the field. With this Mrs. Sprague was greatly comforted, but begged then to remit no efforts of their own. It was after three days' fruitless searching among the records of the department and among the men of the Caribee regiment, now returned to Washington en route to the front, that Kate bethought herself of her father's probable presence in the city. She got out of the carriage and entered the long reception room of Willard's to make inquiry. The boy who came at her call said, as soon as she asked for Mr. Boone:

"Why, I jast saw him at the desk, paying his bill. He is probably there still. Wait here until I see."

But Kate, fearing that he might be gone before she could reach him, followed the boy. There was no sign of her father at the desk, and, turning hastily out of the main corridor, filled with officers and the clank of swords almost stunning her, she reached the porch just as a cab set out toward the station. She might a glimpse of her father's face in it. He was leaving the city. She must see him. The inspiration of the instant suggested by a cabman was followed. She hastily entered the vehicle and bade the driver keep in sight of the one her father was in until it came to a stop. The driver whipped up his horses, but there wasn't much speed in them. Kate dared not look out of the window, and sat in feverish anxiety while she was whirled along Pennsylvania Avenue, almost to the Baltimore Station, then the only one in the city connecting with the North. To her surprise, the driver stopped near the curb a block or more short of the railway. She looked out, and as she did so the driver pointed to her father's carriage halted just ahead. She took out her purse, but was delayed a moment in getting the fare, keeping her eye, however, on her father as he hurried from the cab to a building before which a sentry was lazily pacing. She was not two minutes in reaching the doorway, but he had disappeared.

The soldier asked her no questions, and of course she could ask none, as probably her father was unknown to the military filling the place. She must follow on until she overtook him. There were clerks busy at long desks, military officials moving about with files of documents. The presence of a few women in widow's weeds reassured Kate, and as no one molested her she persisted in her design. He was not on the lower floor, and, coming back, she ascended a broad stairway. The hall was wide, and filled with people all in uniform. She could hear a monotonous voice reading in front, where the crowd clustered thickest. She looked about helplessly, and tried to push forward. Suddenly she heard the words: "Guilty of taking the life of the same Wesley Boone. Specification third: And that the said John Sprague is guilty of the crime of spying inside the lines of the armies of the United States." For a moment Kate stood stupefied—rooted to the floor. Jack was undergoing an ignominious trial for murder—for desertion! All fear, all timidity, all sense of the unfitness of feminine evidence in such a place fled from her. She pushed her way through the astonished throng which fell aside as they saw her black dress and flowing drapery. She reached the last range of benches, where men were seated, some writing, some consulting documents, while the clerk read the charges. Her eye fell upon her father seated near the place of the presiding officer. She grew confident and confirmed by the sight: it was a signal to the daring that fired her. "Stop!" she said, in a clear voice. "I don't know what this place is; I don't know what meaning these proceedings have. I heard a charge that is not true. It is false that John Sprague murdered Wesley Boone. Wesley Boone was my brother, and he was killed in the dark by one of several shots fired at the same instant. Furthermore, my brother was armed and in the sleeping-room of the mistress of the house at the dead of night. If John Sprague's bullet killed him it was shot in self-defense and in the safeguarding of two terrified women. He had no more idea of whom he was struggling with than—than the soldier who fires in battle. Furthermore, he is no spy. He risked his life to rescue prisoners. He saved the life of one of them who can be brought here to testify. He—"

But here Kale broke down. She had spoken with a passionate, resentful vehemence, her mind all the time seething with the fear and shame of her father's responsibility for this hideous attack upon the absent. She stretched out her hand exhaustedly for support. A young officer near her pushed up a chair and helped her into it. Boone had turned in speechless amazement as the first words of the voice sounded in his ears. His back was toward the door, and he had not seen Kate. He turned as she broke into this fervid apostrophe. Whether from surprise, prudence, or anger he sat silent, uninterrupting till she tottered into the seat placed for her by a stranger. Then he arose and went to her side, in nowise angry or discomposed so far as his outward demeanor betrayed him. The presiding officer of the court-martial had attempted to silence Kate by a gesture, but with eyes fixed steadily upon him she had disregarded his command. Now, however, he spoke:

"Madame, you must know this is highly disorderly and indecorous. The court can take no cognizance of this sort of testimony. Do you desire to be heard by counsel? If you do, the judge-advocate will give you all lawful assistance."

"If the court please, this lady is my daughter. She is somewhat excited.
I will take the necessary measures in the matter," Boone began.

Kate pushed her father from before her and again addressed the president.

"I refuse my father's aid in this case. I don't know what is necessary, but I ask this court, if it has anything to do with John Sprague, to give his friends an opportunity to present his story truthfully and without prejudice."

"The judge-advocate will give you all necessary information. Meanwhile, the case will be adjourned until to-morrow."

Elisha Boone stood beside his daughter, a figure of perplexity and chagrin. He dared not remonstrate openly. He was forced to hear the judge-advocate question this extraordinary witness, and instruct her on the steps necessary to be taken; worse than all, hear him inform Kate that the citations to John Sprague had been regularly issued, and that the evidence of his desertion rested wholly on the fact that he had put in no answer to the charges promulgated against him by his commanding officer; that the trial was proceeding on the ground that Sprague had deserted to the enemy, and refused to answer within the time allowed by law.

"But he has never heard of the charges," Kate cried, indignantly. "He has not been heard of since he escaped from Richmond."

"As we understand it, he reached the Union lines merely to ambuscade our outposts, and then returned to Richmond."

"His sister left Richmond ten days after his flight, and he had then passed into our lines, as she had the surest means of knowing."

"There is some extraordinary error in all this. If Sprague can be produced before the term fixed by the regulations, he can vindicate himself by establishing the facts you have told me. If not, we have no alternative but to condemn him to death as a spy and deserter. The testimony on these specifications is uncontradicted. The murder we may not be able to establish, though we have witnesses of the shooting."

It was arranged that Sprague's counsel should see the judge-advocate at once, Kate giving him the address in case by any accident she should be prevented from seeing the Spragues. As she left the room, under a fusillade of admiring glances, she leaned on her father's arm, trembling but resolute. She now knew the worst, and she had no further terror. As they reached the door, her father asked:

"Where are you going? I suppose I need not tell you that I was on my way home when I came here, for I suppose you have been spying on my movements."

"Never. I feared you were acting unwisely, but I never dreamed of watching you. Providence has put your plans in my hands at nearly every step, but I was so ignorant that, of myself, the information would have done but little service to poor Jack. I came into the court by the merest chance. I saw you get into the cab at Willard's, and as I had only reached Washington, I wanted to see you before you went away. I drove after you—followed without the slightest suspicion of the place or your purpose in it."

"Well, all your running about is useless. He will be sentenced to death and the family disgraced. Nothing can now prevent that."

"Yes, Jack can prevent it! I can prevent it!"

"How?"

"Jack will be found. Surely they dare not commit such a monstrous crime against the absent, the undefended!"

"Well, we won't talk of it. I suppose you are with the Spragues?"

"Yes; I shall remain with them until this is ended."

"What if I should tell you to come home with me?"

"I should, of course, obey you if you commanded me. But before doing so I should have to put my statement in legal shape—that is, swear to it, and give my address to the court that I might be regularly summoned."

"You know something of law, too, I see. I sha'n't ask you to go home, nor shall I go myself. I shall remain to see how this affair turns out."

They were driving down Pennsylvania Avenue now. Kate, recalling her departure, asked, "You did not get the letter I left for you at home?"

"No, I did not know you were gone."

"I left a few lines to tell you that I had seen Jones." She watched him as she said this. He did not start, as she expected. His lips were suddenly compressed and his eye grew dark; then he smiled grimly.

"I hope you felt repaid for your trouble."

"Yes. I felt amply repaid. Jones has undertaken to find out what became of Jack after his arrival at the Union outposts."

"Did you discuss the whole affair with him?"

"Yes. I was greatly relieved by what I learned. I was afraid you had some sinister purpose in secreting him as the only link between Jack and his friends. It gave me new life to find that you had been so tender and thoughtful to Jones, for, as the event proved, he no sooner learned that there were apprehensions as to Jack's safety, than he set about his discovery."

"Did Jones share your grateful sentiment?"

"I think he did. To spare you agitation, he set out at once alone, in order that you might be relieved of all responsibility."

"Ah!" And Elisha Boone sank far back in the cushion. The carriage stopped in front of Willard's; then he said: "I shall remain here now. I will order the driver to take you home. Come to me as often as you can." He kissed her in the old friendly way and hurried into the hotel.

On reaching her lodgings she found a telegram waiting her. It read:
"Jones gone South. He will advise you of his movements. ELKINS."