Seated upon the lounge where he so often had rested, with her elbows resting upon the table on which his arms had so frequently reposed, sat the afflicted Libby. She had heard her paternal leave the house an hour before, and she had just heard the sound of his boots in the hall below as he returned; but she felt no desire to learn the reason thereof. Like her mother, she had seen the account of Mr. Peters' arrest in the morning paper, and her bewilderment at the statement respecting the device used to entrap that persecuted youth by a Daughter of the South, was only equalled by her grief at the unfortunate present predicament of her lover. So absorbed was she in her sorrows that she heard not the opening of the parlor door below her, nor the sound of footsteps on the stairs:—
"Miss Ordeth!"
Was it a dream? The beautiful mourner turned quickly in the direction of the sound, and beheld the bodily presentment of Mr. Bob Peters, who stood near the door with his shocking bad hat between his hands and an expression of stern reproach upon his countenance.
"Bob!—you here?" exclaimed the maiden, starting from her seat with a little shriek.
"Mr. Peters, if you please, Madame," said the late captive, with much dignity. "Owing to a great spread of Union sentiment in the bosom of your paternal
relative, and his consequent representation in my behalf, I am here, to blast you with the sight of the innocence you have betrayed! I slipped up here to confront you, Madame," observed Mr. Peters, with some ease of manner, "while the old ones were packing the silver-plated spoons preparatory to a combined movement on the peaceful hamlet of Danville."
"What do you mean, you ridiculous thing?" asked Libby, scarcely believing her own ears.
"That we must part," returned Mr. Peters, calmly straightening an angle in the rim of his hat. "You named an hour for my nocturnal escape—quarter-past Twelve. I fled the Residence at that unseemly hour, though another maiden had previously invited me to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I went, and walked straight into the arms of the unsleeping Southern Confederacy, who was inebriated at the time, and conducted me to the penal pork-packing establishment. Enough! we part. I go to Danville with you, but only as an ordinary acquaintance of chilling reserve."
"Why Bob, what can you mean?" ejaculated Libby, to whom this remarkable speech was not particularly lucid; "it was not my fault that you were taken. If you had gone at quarter-past Twelve, as I told you, all would have been well. Oh, Bob, when Jocko told me next morning that he had waited for you a whole hour in the hall in vain, and when ma and I found that you had really gone at the wrong time, I sat right down and cried my eyes out."
"The wrong time!" exclaimed Mr. Peters, striding suddenly toward the mirror. "Impossible! Observe