At this, Jones, looking around the room, marked the two doors, one leading to the hall, the other to the drawing-room. He deliberately went to each, and, locking it, slipped the key in his pocket. He glanced reassuringly at Kate, as she sat dumfounded waiting the issue of this singular scene. He confronted Boone, leaning against the mantel.
"It's just as well that we have a witness to this final settlement, Elisha Boone.—Twenty years ago, Miss Boone, I was a citizen of this town. I was the owner of these acres. I am Richard Perley. In those days I was a wild fellow—I thought then, a wicked one; but I have learned since that I was not, for folly is not crime. In those days—I was barely twenty-five—your father had a hard ground to till in his way of life. I became his patron, and from that I became his slave. I never exactly knew how it came about, but within a few years most of my property was mortgaged to Elisha Boone. I won't accuse him, as the world does, of inciting me to drink and gambling. God knows he has enough to answer for without that! In the end I was driven to a deed that imperiled my liberty, and Elisha Boone put the temptation and the means to do it within my reach. Detection followed, and the detection came about through Elisha Boone. All my property in his hands, my name a scorn, and my person subject to the law, Elisha Boone had no further fear of me, and thenceforth doled me out an income sufficient to supply my modest wants. I strove to turn the new leaf that recommends itself to men who have exhausted the so-called pleasures of life. I was living in honesty and seclusion in Richmond, when Boone, who had never lost sight of me, came with a mission for me to perform. I was engaged as an agent of the detective force of the United States, with the special duty of rescuing Wesley Boone from captivity.
"I was further commissioned to get evidence against John Sprague, fixing upon him the crime of betraying his colors and aiding the Confederacy. In the attempt to rescue Captain Boone at Bosedale circumstances pointed to the guilt of young Sprague, but that was all dissipated a few weeks after, when, at the peril of his own life, not once, but a score of times, he rashly liberated a score or two of prisoners, and personally led them through an entire rebel army to the Union lines. I, who would have been abandoned by a less noble nature, for I was weakened by captivity and bad fare, broke down, but Sprague and—and—young Dick—my son, clung to me with such devotion as few sons would exhibit under such trials, and brought me safe to the outposts. Here, by some mysterious means, we were all dispersed. When I found my senses I was under Elisha Boone's Samaritan care in the house where you saw me at first. The two boys, Sprague and Perley, spirited away from the hospital at Hampton, where they had been entered under assumed names, Jacques and Paling, were by some curious instrumentality hidden in the small-pox ward of the rebel prison at Point Lookout. While they lay there, and while some one in Washington knew that they were there, a court martial in that city hurriedly convened, found John Sprague guilty of murder, desertion, and treason, and the evening dispatches from Washington state that John Sprague is to be shot a week from Friday in a hollow square, in which a company of the Caribees is to do the shooting.
"Miss Boone, you worked faithfully to rescue the life of this young man, but your father has brought that work to ruin. Worse, the death you dreaded when you gave heart and soul to the rescue of the lost was a mercy compared to that in store for him. He is to be shot by a file of his own company, seated upon a rough board coffin, ready to receive his mangled remains. You will—"
But Kate, at this hideous detail, fell with a low, wailing cry to the floor, happily dead to the woful consciousness of the scene and its meaning. Jones ran to the door, and, unlocking it, shouted for the servants. When they came, she was carried to her room and the physician summoned. Almost at the same time Olympia, in her traveling-dress, drove up. She was informed by the servants of Kate's state, and, without stopping to ask permission, ran up to the sick-room. Kate was now conscious, but at sight of Olympia she covered her face, shuddering.
"Ah, Kate! Kate! what is it? Have you learned the dreadful news? I am going to take the train back this evening."
"I, too, will go with you. Stay with me; don't leave me!"
She stopped, put out her hand, as if to make sure of Olympia, then broke into low but convulsive sobs. Her father, with the doctor, entered the room; but at the sight Kate turned her head to the wall, crying, piteously:
"No, no—not here, not here! I can't see him now! Oh, spare me! I—I—"
"Do your duty, doctor," Boone said, in a quick, gasping tone, and with an uncertain step quit the chamber. Olympia explained to the physician that Kate had heard painful news from an unexpected quarter, and that her illness was more nervous than physical.