“Your best plan is to go by Harper’s Ferry. It is a difficult matter to get through anywhere now, but if you get to Virginia at all I think it must be by way of Harper’s Ferry.”
Major Brooks and Colonel Whipple joined us, and the matter ended as on the previous day, by Captain Locke and Colonel Whipple walking off down the street together.
“Moore is a splendid fellow,” Captain Hosmer said to me, when we had the sofa to ourselves. “I am glad you introduced us. Your not doing so looked suspicious, and I was troubled for fear he would get you into some scrape or other.”
Dear, generous fellow, how I hated to deceive him, and how it was on the tip of my tongue to tell him who Captain Locke was, until I remembered what his duty would be if I told him! And Captain Locke’s secret was mine to keep. He had been ready to risk his life rather than leave me alone at Berlin! Then, too, poor fellow, he had such a slender chance, I thought, of getting home alive that not even an enemy would care to make it worse. I used to look at his bonnie white throat and shudder.
“God bless you,” he said to me once, “for all your goodness to a poor, lonely, stray fellow! You shouldn’t be afraid for me. You say your ‘Hail Marys’ for me, you know.”
I had been telling him I was afraid for him, and he had, as usual, tried to reassure me and to laugh me out of it. He was never afraid for himself—I believe he would have stood up to be shot with a laugh on his lips. I wonder if he was laughing when they shot him—my dear, brave friend!
In the meantime we had heard that Mr. Holliway had been arrested in West Virginia, was lying in prison somewhere, and that his friends were trying to get him out, and before I left Baltimore we heard that he had died in prison just as an exchange had been arranged.
My return to Virginia was the subject of daily discussions between me and my two captains, and in this way Captain Locke continued to find out ways that he must not go, and eventually that we must not go together. It was he who first said it.
“I should be no earthly good, but a disadvantage to you, little madam. Hosmer is going to see you through this thing all right.”
Then, seeing my downcast look, he went on cheerily: “I’ll get through somehow all right, sooner or later, and we’ll meet in Old Virginia. Don’t bother your dear little head about me.”