"Hallo, old fellow! Safe eh, after all!" cried one who recognised him; while another said: "Thought you had gone to Richmond, without waiting for the rest of us!" and another, but in a lower tone that perhaps Marion Hobart did not hear: "I say, Jack, where the deuce did you pick up a petticoat, and a white one at that?"
Colonel Warren received the young Zouave, and heard his story, paying all respect to the young girl under his protection. He at once promised, at Crawford's request, that a file of soldiers should go down to the burned house and perform the rites of burial before the corps left the hill; whereupon the face of the young girl more fully repaid him by its expression of true gratitude, than did even her words of sad thankfulness. There are men who have called Colonel Warren not only a martinet but a man devoid of feeling: let his action on this occasion prove how little those know him who speak of him thus coldly.
"Some of the wagons are leaving for the Landing just now," he said to Crawford, after the latter had explained the nature of his wound and briefly told the story of the protection he had promised the young girl, which he would have no difficulty in finding for her in the company of his brother and sister. "Some of the wagons are going down now. You are of no use here, and you had as well take the lady down at once. Make her as comfortable as you can in one of the wagons. The ride is only a short one; and perhaps you may be able to find a berth for her on board one of the boats at the Landing. Stay, Crawford, a despatch-boat will be going down to Monroe in the morning. You are a faithful fellow and a good soldier. I will see to it, in the morning, that you have a furlough for a month. I think we shall do nothing more for a month, and you may need that time to get a new arm. Take Miss Hobart at once to New York, and place her with your sister. That is all—now look for a place in one of the wagons. Good night—I will see about the rest before the boat leaves."
Crawford's warm "God bless you, Colonel!" was more softly, but not less earnestly echoed by the "I thank you, sir, very much. You are very good and kind!" of the young girl; and the two left the tent to follow out the directions of the officer. Bob Webster, unwounded, was already with his companions, picking up what he could find left in the way of rations, and telling over, for the sixth time already, the adventures of the night.
Not to linger upon what no longer needs particular description, let it be said in a word that Crawford succeeded in securing transportation for the young girl and himself to Harrison's Landing; that they reached that return terminus of the campaign against Richmond, a little after midnight; that a place was found on board one of the boats at the Landing, for Miss Hobart, under the kind care of the colored chambermaid; that Colonel Warren kept his promise and procured the wounded Zouave, (whose arm had been examined by one of the surgeons, and found to be badly torn and lacerated, though none of the bones were broken), his furlough for a month "or until recovered;" that they went down the next day on the despatch boat to Fortress Monroe, whence General Wool at once sent them on to Washington; and that on the evening of the Fourth of July they reached the city of New York, and John Crawford had the pleasure of placing his sacred charge under the protection of his brother, whom he found yet so sadly an invalid,—and of his sister, who received her with a warmer and more considerate kindness than he had ever before known her to exhibit towards any living object.
CHAPTER XX.
Judge Owen and his Domestic Discipline—Two Criminals at the Bar, with a Special Edict following—A Row At Wallack's, and one more Recognition.
It has again been unavoidable, in following the fortunes of other characters connected with this narration, to lose sight of those who have prominently figured in the mansion of Judge Owen—the Judge himself, his wife, his daughter Emily, Aunt Martha, and the two lovers who fought over that very pretty little bone as if they had been dogs and she a tit-bit of very different description. But it is one of the first principles of conducting the successful march of an army, that no stragglers should be allowed to lag too far behind, lest a sudden onslaught upon them might cause a panic extending to all the other portions of the force. Let the Judge and his family, then, be kept up as nearly as possible to the march of the main body; and especially let not pretty Emily Owen and her mischievous printer-lover be lost from the ranks by any contingency.
Aunt Martha saw farther into futurity than her niece, when she decided that the row between Frank Wallace and Colonel John Boadley Bancker, if it came to the Judge's ears, would be likely to make affairs much worse instead of better; and Emily and she had some serious conversation over the prospect, that night of the street accident, after both the rivals had gone,—which did not tend to make the young girl go to her white pillow with the most blissful of anticipations. The younger lady thought it doubtful whether the matter need come to the knowledge of her father at all, as she did not believe that the Colonel would so far bemean himself as to make a complaint to the father of the young girl he was pursuing, of the advantages which another suitor might possess over him in the mind of the girl herself. Aunt Martha, who had seen somewhat more than her niece of the world and its meanness, did not consider the Colonel too proud to take such a course, if he believed himself likely to gain by it; and besides—she remembered, what her niece did not, that they were by no means alone in the house when the little affair occurred. Servants—those important personages, who in modern days keep the houses and permit their masters and mistresses, on the payment of a round sum per week, to live in the house with them—those ubiquitous personages, who seem to have the faculty of being precisely where they are not wanted, when any family trouble is to be ventilated,—servants were in the house at the time, and there was no guaranty whatever that they had not been sufficiently near to hear every awkward word that had been spoken.