"Pay no attention to him, Keeper," retorted Eve, indignantly, "I wish your attendance."
Not at all abashed by the severity of her tone, Mr. Peters nodded to the officer and smiled pleasantly.
"Then I must expose you with a witness to it," he said, good-naturedly; "you are offended, Miss Eve because I did not comply with your kind note and meet your friends at a quarter-of Twelve, instead of walking straight into trouble at quarter-past, as I did."
"You are beneath my notice," was the answer of Miss Adams; "but since you choose to speak so I must explain myself to this good man here. You are indebted to me for your present situation. I am a Southern woman, sir, and it was my duty as a Southerner, to see that you did not escape to injure our cause by telling some of your Northern falsehoods about us. I wrote you the note you speak of in order that you might be drawn from your hiding place, and also one to the authorities putting them on the watch. I may be a woman, but I have the heart of a man."
If Miss Adams did not have the heart of a man it was owing to no neglect on her part of any possible means to catch such a heart. That is to say, all her dearest and most intimate female friends said so.
Her speech was evidently intended to impress the prisoner with a torturing sense of woman's vengeance, but, contrary to her expectation, Mr. Peters received
it with the utmost complacency. In fact, he even evinced a playful disposition and favored the attentive keeper with an insidious wink.
"I don't doubt that your intentions were excellent, Miss Eve," said Mr. Bob Peters, with an air of great enjoyment; "but they did not work as well as your affectionate heart designed. Because—you see—I did'nt come out at a quarter of Twelve at all, nor did I follow any of your directions. Oh, no! It was just quarter-past Twelve by my repeater when I departed from my late residence, and it's my private opinion that your dear friend, Miss Ordeth, had the privilege of being my adviser on that nocturnal occasion. Don't let your sensitive soul be afflicted with the thought that you have wronged confiding innocence," added Bob, pathetically, "for I do assure you that you are as guiltless as the child unborn."
"What do you mean, sir?" asked Eve, in some haste; "were you not arrested at a quarter of Twelve?"
"Why no!" said Bob. "Don't I tell you that I didn't break cover until quarter-past?"