"Back!" said the sharp voice of the sorceress, at the impassioned tone of the last words and that clasping of the hands which told that the subject might be kneeling the next moment. "Back! No nearer, on your life! I have not the power of life and death, but I may have the power of happiness and misery. Go!—or wish that you had done so, till the very day you die!"
Her arm was stretched out with a queenly gesture, at once of warning and command. Tom Leslie obeyed, with such an effort as one sometimes makes in a forced arousing from sleep. He took one more glance at the motionless face and form, then dashed through the curtain and let it fall behind him. Joe Harris had partially recovered from her excitement, and sat beside Bell, with her face on the latter's shoulder. She roused herself and even attempted a laugh with some success, when the voice of Leslie was heard; and if for one instant the allegiance of the young man had wavered in the presence of the unnatural and the overwhelming, there was something in that bright, clear, good face, only temporarily shadowed by her late excitement, calculated to restore him at once to thought and to truth.
With the heavy crash of thunder which had accompanied if it had not caused the fright of the young girl, the storm seemed to have culminated and spent itself; and by this time the rain had nearly ceased. Not a word passed between the three as to what had occurred to either—any conversation on that subject was naturally reserved for another place and a later hour. The black girl came out again from behind the curtain and received with a "Thank you, Monsieur!" and a curtsey the half eagle which dropped into her hand. Leslie left the ladies alone for a moment, ran down to the door and found a carriage; and in a few moments, without further adventure, the three were on their way up-town, the journalist to return again to his evening avocations, after accompanying the two, whose disordered nerves he scarcely yet dared trust alone, to their place of destination.
If during that ride the hand of Josephine Harris, a little hot and feverish from late excitement, accidentally fell again into his own and rested there as if it rather liked the position—whose business was it, except their own?
CHAPTER XV.
A Peep at Camp Lyon and the Two Hundredth Regiment—Discipline and the Dice-Box—How Seven Hundred Men Can Be Squeezed into Three.
"I am going to West Falls again in a few days—that is, if we do not get orders for Washington," Colonel Egbert Crawford said, speaking to his cousin, a few chapters back, as may be remembered. By which he meant, of course, if he meant anything, that the Two Hundredth Regiment, with the raising of which he had been charged by Major-General Governor Morgan, was in a high state of discipline as well as fully up to the maximum in numbers, and burning to go down to the field of carnage and revenge the deaths of those foully slaughtered by rebel hands.
It may be interesting to know exactly what was the condition of the Two Hundredth Regiment, at that exact time—how many it numbered—what was its proficiency in drill—what was the appearance of the camp at which it was quartered—and how laboriously Colonel Crawford was engaged in bringing it up to the highest standard of perfection for citizen soldiery. For this purpose, it will be well to look in at the encampment, with the eyes of some persons from the city who visited it on Sunday the 29th of June—the very day on which McClellan, from sheer lack of troops, abandoned the White House, necessarily destroying so much valuable property, losing for the time the last hope of the capture of Richmond, and falling back on the line of the James River.
The Two Hundredth Regiment lay at "Camp Lyon," (as it may be designated for the purposes of this chronicle)—a locality on Long Island, a few miles eastward from the City Hall of Brooklyn, and easily accessible by one of the lines of horse-cars running from Fulton Ferry. It had been some two months established; recruiting for the regiment was said to be going on very rapidly; "only a few more men wanted" was the burden of the song sung in the advertising columns of the morning papers; rations for some seven hundred men were continually furnished for it, by the Quartermaster's Department; the Colonel made flattering reports of it every day or two, to the higher military authorities in the city, and at least once a week to the still higher authorities at Albany; and a political Brigadier-General was reported to have gone down and reviewed it, once or twice, coming back eminently satisfied with its numbers, discipline and performances.