"What is the matter?" asks the Commandant.
The other sits down, and, as if only talking to himself, tells him. One hour has swept away the fallacies of his lifetime. He sees the Rebellion as it is,—the outbreak and outworking of that spirit which makes hell horrible. Hitherto, that night, he has acted from love, not duty. Now he bows only to the All-Right and the All-Beautiful, and in his heart is that psalm of work, sung by one of old, and by all true men since the dawn of creation: "Here am I, Lord! Send me!"
The first gray of morning is streaking the east, when he goes forth to find a hiding-place. The sun is not up, and the early light comes dimly through the misty clouds, but about him still hang the long, dark shadows. This is a world of shadows. Only in the atmosphere which soon inclosed him is there no night and no shadow.
Soon the Texan's escape is known at the camp, and a great hue-and-cry follows. Handbills are got out, a reward is offered, and by that Sunday noon his name is on every street-corner. Squads of soldiers and police ransack the city and invade every Rebel asylum. Strange things are brought to light, and strange gentry dragged out of dark closets; but nowhere is found the Texan. The search is well done, for the pursuers are in dead earnest; and, Captain Hines, if you don't trust him now, you are a fool, with all your astuteness!
So the day wears away and the night cometh. Just at dark a man enters the private door of the Tremont House, and goes up to a room where the Commandant is waiting. He sports a light rattan, wears a stove-pipe hat, a Sunday suit, and is shaven and shorn like unto Samson. What is the Commandant doing with such a dandy? Soon the gas is lighted; and lo, it is the Texan! But who in creation would know him? The plot, he says, thickens. More "Butternuts" have arrived, and the deed will be done on Tuesday night, as sure as Christmas is coming. He has seen his men,—two hundred, picked, and every one clamoring for pickings. Hines, who carries the bag, is to give him ten thousand greenbacks, to stop their mouths and stuff their pockets, at nine in the morning.
"And to-morrow night we'll have them, sure! And, how say you, give you shackles and a dungeon?" asks the Commandant, his mouth wreathing with grim wrinkles.
"Anything you like. Anything to blot out my record of treason."
He has learned the words,—they are on his heart, not to be razed out forever.
When he is gone, up and down the room goes the Commandant, as is his fashion. He is playing a desperate game. The stake is awful. He holds the ace of trumps,—but shall he risk the game upon it? At half past eight he sits down and writes a dispatch to his General. In it he says:—
"My force is, as you know, too weak and much overworked,—only eight hundred men, all told, to guard between eight and nine thousand prisoners. I am certainly not justified in waiting to take risks, and mean to arrest these officers, if possible, before morning."