The Virginian echoed the laugh.
"Fairly hit back," he said. "I have played the spy, more than once. Who has not, I wonder?"
"What are you to-night?" asked Leslie, with a marked banter in his tone. "It is none of my business, of course, here on Canadian ground, but the other day, on Goat Island, you were—"
"A loyal American," answered Ralston, interrupting him. "To-night, and on Canadian ground, I am a loyal Virginian, true to my own State, first, last and forever."
"By George! I thought so all the while!" said Leslie, though there was certainly no anger in his tone. (It is a matter of doubt whether within the preceding few days that young man had not found himself so pleasantly situated in some regards, as to be incapable of becoming very easily vexed, even for the sake of patriotism).
"We differ on the national question, and I suppose conscientiously," said Ralston. "I hold the extreme doctrine of State Rights, and you that of centralization. I am a rebel—you are a loyalist. All right—don't let us quarrel, especially as we have been friends and as you are certainly a jolly good fellow and I ought to be."
"I ought to hate you and wish for your extermination," said Leslie, in the same frank tone; "and if I heard you professing the same sentiments at the St. Nicholas I should certainly help send you to Fort Lafayette. And yet I rather like you, in spite of the fact that I believe you have been concerned in some of the nests of secession in New York, through which the enemy—that's your friends!—obtained knowledge of all that was going on at the North."
"Never nearer right in your life!" said the Virginian. "In fact you are more nearly correct than even you imagine. One of the reasons why the Union cause can never succeed, is that the 'rebellion,' as you call it, has emissaries among you in every class of society, from the club-house to the brothel. You will scarcely believe, even with your experience, how society is getting mixed up! I found Kate F——, the daughter of one of my rich old neighbors, seduced and lured away from home, the inmate of one of those houses I have just named; and as I could do nothing better to relieve her just then, I employed her for the cause. To-night she is asleep in this house, my wife's servant. You wouldn't trust her, would you?—I would. But you need not suppose that the machinery is all worked among the lower classes. Don't trust the brown-stone houses too far! We had a brown-stone house up-town, until not many days ago—"
"Yes, on East 5— Street, not far from the Eastern Dispensary," said Leslie, breaking in upon the Virginian in turn; "and another on Prince Street, and—"
"Oh, you seem to know a good deal about it," said Ralston, trying to keep up his tone of banter, but his voice showing that he was really a little surprised. "And yet I do not think that you can be altogether behind the curtain after all. The worst foes of what you call the 'Union cause' have not been those who declared themselves secessionists. Some of your leading officials, it may be pleasant to you to know, are as arrant 'rebels' as even Virginia can furnish; and with them and the correspondence carried on through their offices, we have worked more effectively than in almost any other way."