“If James Carleton is your brother, I s’pose it was,” Bill said; “and that’s the very picter he stuck to like a chestnut burr, begging for it like a dog, and offerin’ everything he had if I’d give it up.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” and Rose’s eye blazed with anger, making Bill shrink before their indignant gaze.
“’Twas rotten mean in me, I know,” he said timidly, “but they was con-tra-band according to law, and I felt so savage at the pesky Rebels then. I didn’t know ’twas you he teased so for, actually cryin’ when I wouldn’t give it up. I’m sorry, I be, I swan, and I’ll give you every confounded contraband. You’ve got the watch, and there’s the ring, the spetacles, the tobarker box, and the thingumbob for cigars, the sum total of his traps, except a chaw or so of the weed that I couldn’t very well bring back,” and Bill’s face wore a very satisfied expression as he laid in Rose’s lap every article belongin’ to her brother.
She knew now who the prisoner was in whom she had felt so strange an interest. It was Jimmie, and the mystery concerning his fate was solved. He was a captive at Washington, and her heart ached to its very core as she thought of both her brothers languishing so many weary months in prison. Very minutely she questioned Bill, eliciting from him little or nothing concerning Jimmie’s present condition. He only knew that he was a captive still, that he was represented as maintaining the utmost reserve, seldom speaking except to answer direct questions, and that he seemed very unhappy.
“Poor boy, he wants to come home, I know,” and Rose sobbed aloud, as she thought how desolate and homesick he must be. “I can’t stay any longer to-day,” she said, as she heard Mrs. Baker at the door, and bidding Bill good-bye, she hurried home, where, after a long passionate flood of tears, wept in Annie’s lap, she wrote to her mother and husband both, telling them where Jimmie was, and begging of the former to come at once and go with her to Washington.
CHAPTER XVI.
NEWS DIRECT FROM JIMMIE.
That night, as Rose sat alone in her cheerful boudoir, musing upon the strange events which had occurred within the last few months, a letter was brought to her, bearing her mother’s handwriting. It had passed hers on the road, and Rose tore it open, starting, as a soiled, tear-stained note dropped from the inside upon the floor. Intuitively she felt that it was from Jimmie, and catching it up, she read the homesick, heart-sick, remorseful cry of penitence and contrition which the weary Rebel-boy had at last sent to his mother. Stubborness and proud reserve could hold out no longer and he had written, confessing his error, and begging earnestly for the forgiveness he knew he did not deserve.
“I am not all bad,” he said; “and on that quiet morning, when beneath the cover of the Virginia woods I lay, watching the Union soldiers coming so bravely on, there was a dizziness in my brain, and a strange, womanly feeling at my heart, while a sensation I cannot describe thrilled every nerve when I saw in the distance the Stars and Stripes waving in the summer wind. How I wanted to warn them of their danger, to bid them turn back from the snare so cunningly devised, and how proud I felt of the Federal soldiers when contrasting them with ours. I fancied I could tell which were the Boston boys, and there came a mist before my eyes, as I thought how your dear hands and those of little Rose had possibly helped to make some portion of the dress they wore.
“You know about the battle. You read it months ago, and wept, perhaps, as you thought of Jimmie firing at his own brother, it might be, but, mother, I did not. I scarcely fired at all, and when I was compelled to do so to avoid suspicion, it was so high that neither the wounded nor the dead can accuse me as their murderer; and I’m glad now that it is so. It makes my prison bed softer to know there is no stain of blood upon my soul.