"Yes; so it will," said Traverse, with animation. "There will be no need now of applying to law, especially if you will come down with me to East Feliciana and bring the confession with you."
"I will set out with you this very morning, if you wish, as I am on leave. What! To hasten to the release of Capitola's mother, I would set out at midnight and ride straight on for a week!"
"Ah! there is no need of such extravagant feats of travel. It is now ten o'clock; if we start within an hour we can reach the 'Calm Retreat' by eleven o'clock to-night."
"En avant, then," exclaimed Herbert, rising and ringing the bell.
Traverse ordered horses, and in twenty minutes the friends were on the road to East Feliciana.
They reached the "Calm Retreat" so late that night that there was none but the porter awake to admit them.
Traverse took his friend up to his own dormitory, saying, laughingly:
"It is an unappreciable distance of time since you and I occupied the same bed, Herbert."
"Yes; but it is not the first, by five hundred times. D' you remember, Traverse, the low attic where we used to sleep and how on stormy nights we used to listen to the rain pattering on the roof, within two or three inches of our faces, and how we used to be half afraid to turn over for fear that we should bump our heads against the timbers of the ceiling?"
"Yes, indeed," said Traverse.