"Where is the key, and what is the mystery?" asked Mr. Tompkins.
"I will arrange so that you shall receive the key after my death. The secret relates to the parentage of your foster child."
A loud clap of thunder shook, and, for one moment, a blaze of lightning enwrapped the earth. When Mr. Tompkins lifted his dazzled eyes, he was alone. The strange man had disappeared as suddenly as if he had melted into air.
CHAPTER XIX. IRENE'S DILEMMA—THE BROTHERS MEET.
To Irene the varied and startling changes that had lately taken place, brought perplexity and grief. The political question, that she had heard discussed since her early childhood, until it had become to her as familiar as a household pet, and been deemed as harmless, had broken up the family, and now bade fair to destroy the Nation. Often in her childish innocence had she laughed to hear little Abner declare himself "Papa's Whig," little dreaming of the awful meaning lurking in these words, a meaning powerful for the destruction of homes and country.
A monster had been taken into the Tompkins' family and laughed over and caressed, and now it had arisen in its wrath to prove their destroyer. That monster was difference of political opinion. Irene, with her clear good senses saw the great mistake in the life of her foster parents. Their difference of opinion, kept alive by frequent discussion, and veiled by light and gentle jests, had at last thrown off all disguises, and stood forth a frightful reality, widening with alarming rapidity the chasm opened between them. It may be doubted, if it is safe for husband and wife to differ even in jest.
Irene had puzzled her brain in her endeavor to devise some plan, which might restore to the family the happy harmony of old, but, like many good men whose minds were engrossed with the same endeavor for the country's good, she failed.
The regiment of which Abner Tompkins was a member had returned to the Junction, and the regiment which Colonel Scrabble commanded was again in the neighborhood of Snagtown. Both Abner and Oleah had sent word to their parents that they would probably be able to visit home, while their companies were encamped in the neighborhood.
Colonel Scrabble, finding his position in the vicinity of Snagtown rather uncomfortably near the Junction, where Colonel Holdfast and two other regiments were quartered, fell back about twenty miles south, beyond the Twin Mountains. The good people about Snagtown felt greatly relieved at the departure of the colonel's forces, for they had been kept in a constant state of alarm, expecting battle every day.