In the course of the day he had counted his remaining gold with great satisfaction. He had placed one broad, shining twenty-dollar piece in a small envelope, and now as he walked through the snow he fingered it in his pocket, feeling all the old satisfaction.
He was sure—it was an intuition as well as the logical result of reasoning—that Lucia Catherwood was still in the city and would return to Miss Grayson's cottage. Now he bent his own steps that way, looking up at the peaceful moon and down at the peaceful capital. Nothing was alight except the gambling houses; the dry snow crunched under his feet, but there was no other sound save the tread of an occasional sentinel, and the sharp crack of the timbers in a house contracting under the great cold.
A wind arose and moaned in the desolate streets of the dark city. Prescott bent to the blast, and shivering, drew the collar of his military cloak high about his ears. Then he laughed at himself for a fool because he was going to the help of two women who probably hated and scorned him; but he went on.
The little house was dark and silent. The sky above, though shadowed by night, was blue and clear, showing everything that rose against it; but there was no smoke from the cottage to leave a trail there.
"That's wisdom," thought Prescott. "Coal's too precious a thing now in Richmond to be wasted. It would be cheaper to burn Confederate money."
He stood for a moment, shivering by the gate, having little thought of detection, as use had now bred confidence in him, and then went inside. It was the work of but half a minute to slip a double eagle in its paper wrapping in the crack under the door, and then he walked away feeling again that pleasing glow which always came over him after a good deed.
He was two squares away when he encountered a figure walking softly, and the moonlight revealed the features of Mr. Sefton, the last man in the world whom he wished to see just then. He was startled, even more startled than he would admit to himself, at encountering this man who hung upon him and in a measure seemed to cut off his breath.
But he was convinced once more that it was only chance, as the Secretary's face bore no look of malice, no thought of suspicion, being, on the contrary, mild and smiling. As before, he took Prescott's unresisting arm and pointed up at the bright stars in their sea of blue.
"They are laughing at our passions, Mr. Prescott, perhaps smiling is the word," he said. "Such a peace as that appeals to me. I am not fond of war and I know that you are not. I feel it particularly to-night. There is poetry in the heavens so calm and so cold."
Prescott said nothing; the old sense of oppression, of one caught in a trap, was in full force, and he merely waited.