That morning, while Mildred and Ernest were making their escape, the first passers-by saw a long rope, reaching from the corner room of the fourth story of —— hotel, down to the pavement below. They knew not what it meant. About 9 o’clock though, when the Court-Martial sent for the female prisoner, it was discovered that the “bird had flown.” The sentinel, who had been stationed at the door about twelve o’clock, could give no account of the escape. The door was locked, and he heard nothing. It was presently noised abroad that the lady spy had escaped, and soon hundreds of people gathered in the streets, looked up at the dangling rope, and wondered how a lady could have climbed down such a fearful distance. The general opinion was that she was a brave, daring woman, who was confined to this one mode of escape. “Of course,” they said, “she had friends in the city, who assisted her in the perilous undertaking.” At any rate, she was gone. The chief clerk at the hotel, who had been instrumental in her arrest, was not of the rabid class who regretted her timely flight. “I don’t care,” he said with a smile. “I don’t believe she was a spy anyhow. Even if she was, and they had hanged her, I believe I should have felt guilty of murder.”
Nothing more was ever found out about it, and Capt. Benner bore the character of a true and loyal soldier till the horrid war came to an end. Some years afterwards he met Mildred, and laughingly explained his scheme, remarking that, “people might have had sense enough to know that she could not have escaped in that way.”
“Possibly I might, though,” she said. “There is no telling what one can do, when life depends upon it.” And she laughed as she thought of how she would have appeared, dangling by her hands on a rope between heaven and earth.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] An intelligent member of the Methodist denomination once spoke these very words to the author of this story.
CHAPTER XVI.
A CONFEDERATE MARRIAGE.