“I’m sure that is so, Captain Pollock. And that’s why I beg of you to accept an apology and let me alone.”
The old man spoke very earnestly, and with an undoubted sincerity; but Pollock blazed at him furiously:
“Unless you want to be branded as a liar, you will tell me what this is before I leave the house. There’s a place where a man’s age ceases to be his protection.”
Then Rodney Merriam’s manner changed.
“Please be seated, and don’t, I beg of you, alarm the servants. I’m going to tell you what this trouble is, and before I begin I want to apologize for doing so. And when I finish,—it will take but a moment,—I’m going to apologize to you again. I am sixty years old, Captain Pollock, and I don’t remember that I ever apologized to any one before. The most comfortable thing a man can have is a bad memory. My trouble is that I never forget anything. It was after we had captured Donelson. I had been sent back here to Mariona, my home, on an errand to the governor, who was having a devil of a time of it, fighting Copperheads and getting troops into the field. The old railway station down here was a horrible sight the night the Donelson prisoners were brought in. Many of them were sick and they were taken from the cars and laid out on the floor until they could be carried to Camp Burnside, which had been turned into a rebel prison.
“I was down looking over the prisoners when I struck a little chap who was badly used up. He said his name was Hamilton. He was a Confederate private, but evidently a man of education and breeding. He was on fire with fever, and the whole situation at the station was so forbidding that I got permission to take him to my father’s house. That’s where Mr. Dameron lives now. The officer in charge of the prisoners was a friend of mine; and when he let me take Hamilton away, as a favor, I gave my personal pledge that he should be delivered at the prison whenever they wanted him.
“At home we took a fancy to Hamilton. He was up and about the house in a couple of weeks. I gave him some of my civilian clothes so that he could go down into town. There seemed to be nothing unusual about him. He was a forlorn young fellow,—a prisoner, far from home, and my father and the rest of them at the house liked him. We used to call him our little rebel.
“Then one day there was the devil to pay. My friend, the commandant at the prison, sent a guard to the house to arrest Hamilton, but he had disappeared. We learned then that he was all kinds of a bad lot,—a dangerous spy who had been captured at Donelson purely by accident, but he had turned his capture and illness to good advantage. Mariona was the headquarters of a daring band of southern sympathizers, and Hamilton had established lines of communication with the leaders. There was a scheme afoot to assassinate the governor, and he was to have done the act. His line of retreat to the Ohio had been carefully arranged.
“Hamilton had warning of the discovery of the plot,—there was a Copperhead behind every loyal man here in those days—and got away safely. But you can see that, having vouched for him and harbored him, I was put in a nice position with the authorities. I offered to submit to arrest, but they wouldn’t have it. The governor sent for me and after giving me a good drubbing—he had known me all my life and rubbed it in hard—he told me to go and find Hamilton.
“I was captain of artillery and my chances of advancement were good; but I resigned my commission and spent a year looking for him. He became notorious as a spy, who slipped in and out of our lines with astounding daring. He found out that I was after him, and we used to exchange compliments at long range. As I think of it now I got a good deal of fun out of the chase, and”—the old man smiled—“I fancy the other fellow did, too.