"Yes, I see; but there is no more news of the Caribees. We learn that the wounded have been sent to Richmond, and I shall set out for there to-morrow."
Mrs. Sprague, with Olympia and Merry, drove to the house of a friend she had known years before, whose husband was a Senator. The Boones—or rather Kate—bade them a cordial adieu as they drove off to the National Hotel.
Then the most trying part of the quest began. The War Department was besieged with applicants, mostly women. Orders had been issued to forbid all crossing the lines, and the despairing kinsfolk of the lost were in a panic of impatient terror. In vain Olympia called upon eminent Senators who had been friends of her father; in vain she invoked the aid of the Secretary of State, who had been the family's guest at Acredale. Once she penetrated, by the aid of strong letters, to the Secretary of War. He was surrounded by a hurried throng of orderlies, officers, and clerks, and even after she had been admitted to his office Olympia was left unnoticed on a settee, waiting some sign to approach the dreaded presence. His imperious and abrupt manner, his alternation of deferential concern for some and disdainful impatience for others, gave her small hope that he would heed her prayer. She waited hours, sitting in the crowded room, ill from the oppressive air, the fixed stare of the officers, and the sobbing of others like herself waiting a word with the autocrat. At length, late in the afternoon, when the crowd had quite gone, she heard the Secretary say in an undertone:
"Send an orderly to those women and see what they want."
Each of the waiting women handed credentials to the young man, and each in turn arose trembling and stood before the decisive official at the great, paper-strewn desk. There was no attempt to soften the refusal, as he turned curtly from the pleaders; and Olympia, shrinking from the ordeal, was about to step out of the room, when a tall, care-worn man shambled in, glancing pityingly at her as she arose, half trembling, recognizing the President.
She stepped in front of him in a desperate impulse, and, throwing up her veil, cried piteously:
"O Mr. Lincoln, you are a father, you have a tender heart; you will listen to the bereaved!" He stopped, looking at her kindly, and put his left arm wearily on the desk by his side.
"Yes, my poor girl, I am a father and have a heart; the more's the pity, for just now something else is needed in its place. I suppose your father is over yonder," and he nodded toward the Virginia shore.
"O Mr. Lincoln, my father is farther away than that. My father was Senator Sprague—you served with him in Congress—I—I—thought that perhaps you might take pity on his widow, his daughter, his son, if the poor boy is still living, and—and—"
"Send you across the lines?"