Rosedale had been a bed of thorns to Wesley Boone since his recovery. He felt that he was an incongruous visitor among the rest, as a hawk might feel in a dove-cote. He would have willingly returned to Richmond—even at the risk of re-entering the prison—if Kate had not been on his hands. The life of the place, the constant necessity of masking his aversion to the Spragues, his detestation of Dick, the simple merry-making and intimate amenities of such close quarters, tasked his small art of dissimulation beyond even the most practiced powers. The garment of duplicity was gossamer, he felt, after all, in such atmosphere of loyalty and trust as surrounded him at Rosedale.

He knew that in the daily attrition and conventional intimacies of the table, the drawing-room, or the promenade, the cloak covering his resentful antipathy, his moral perversities, his thinly veiled impatience, was worn to such thin shreds that eyes keen as Jack's must see and know him as he was. What was hatefulest and most unendurable of all was the bondage of truce in which the Atterburys held him. Wesley was no coward, and he ached to meet Jack face to face, arm to arm, and settle with that thoughtless insubordinate a rankling list of griefs heaped up in moments of over-vivacious frankness. He would make Jack smart for his arrogance, his insolence, his cursed condescension so soon as they were back among the Caribees.

But meanwhile, here, daily tortured by harmless things—tortured by his soul's imaginings—Wesley was becoming a burden to Kate, who saw too plainly that he was in misery, and realized that it was largely through his own inherent weakness and insincerity. He had all the coarse fiber of his father without the same force in its texture. With merely superficial good manners, he was never certain whether the punctilious niceties observed toward him by the Spragues and Atterburys were not a species of studied satire. Vincent, who had never shown him the slightest consideration in Acredale, treated him here with the chivalrous decorum that the code of the South demanded in those days to a guest. Wesley ground his teeth under the burden, not quite sure whether it was mockery or malevolence. He watched with malignant attentiveness the imperceptible change of tone and manner that marked the family's treatment of the Spragues. There was none of the grave ceremoniousness he resented in the Atterburys' behavior with them.

Jack was a hobbledehoy son of the house, almost as much as Vincent. Kate, too, was, he felt certain, treated with a reserve not shown to Mrs. Sprague or Merry. Brooding on this, brooding on the unhappiness of his own disposition, which denied him the privilege of enjoying the best at the moment, indifferent to what might be behind, Wesley had come to hate the Atterburys for the burden of an obligation that he could never lift. He hated Mrs. Atterbury for her high-bred, easy ignoring of all conditions save those that she exacted. He hated Rosa for her gayety, her absorption in the young scamp Dick. He hated Vincent because he seemed to think there was no one in the North but the Spragues worthy of a moment's consideration. It is in hate as in love—what we seek we find. Every innocent word and sign that passed in the group, in which he did not seek to make himself one, Wesley construed as a gird at him or his family. Constantly on the watch for slights or disparagements, the most thoughtless acts of the two groups were taken by the tormented egotist as in some sense a disparagement to his own good repute or his family standing.

Nor were the marked affection and confidence shown Kate by everybody in the house a mitigation of this malign fabric of humiliation. Jack's fondness for Kate had not escaped the observant eyes of Dick, who had confided the secret to Rosa, who had likewise unraveled it to mamma, and, as she kept nothing from Vincent, the Atterburys had that sort of interest in Kate that intimate spectators always show in love affairs, where there are no clashing interests involved. It was a moot question, however, between the three, when, after weeks of observation, Mrs. Atterbury declared that Jack was not in love with Miss Boone. "He can't be," she declared. "He doesn't seek her alone; he doesn't make up to her in the evening. Half the time when they come together it is by Dick's arrangement. He seems to be in love with Kate."

"How absurd!" Rosa cried, with a laugh; "a boy like him! Why, he would be in school, if there were no war."

"Well, Rosa, I fancy that Dick hasn't found war very much different from school, so far. He seems to recite a good deal to the mistress, and occupies the dunce's block quite regularly," Vincent retorted, with a provoking significance that set mamma in a brown study and suspended the comments on Kate's and Jack's probable sentiments.

Mrs. Sprague and Wesley were the only people in the house who had no suspicion of a deeper feeling than mere passing goodfellowship between Jack and Kate. Both were blinded by the same confidence. The mother could never conceive a son of the house of Sprague making such a breach on the family traditions as a union with a Boone. Wesley could not conceive a sister of his giving her heart to the son of a family that had insolently refused to concede social equality to her father. Something of Wesley's miserable inner unrest could not fail to be visible to the Atterburys, but the less congenial he became the more watchfully considerate they made their treatment of him. He was their guest, with all the sacred rights and immunities that quality implies, in the exaggerated code of the Southern host. Kate was the single power that Wesley had bent his headstrong will before, ever since he was a boy. His father he obeyed, while in his presence, trusting to wheedling to make his peace in the event of disobedience. But Kate he couldn't wheedle.

She was relentless in her scorn for his meannesses and follies, and, though he did not always heed her counsels, he proved their justness by finding his own course wrong. Kate, however, hesitated about remonstrating with him on his deepening moodiness, for she was not quite sure whether it was mad jealousy of Dick's favor in Rosa's eyes, or a secret purpose to attempt to fly from the gentle bondage of Rosedale. Wesley with Rosa it was remarked by Kate, was, or seemed to be, his better self, or rather better than the self with which others identified him. It was, however, she feared, more to torment Dick, than because she found Wesley to her liking, that the little maid often carried the moody captain off into the garden, pretending to teach him the varied flora of that blooming domain. Dick remarked these excursions with growing impatience, and visited his anger upon Rosa in protests so pungent and woe-begone that she was forced to own to him that she only pretended an interest in the captain, so that he might not think he was shut out of the confidence of the circle.

"And who cares if he does think he is shut out, I should like to know?
He is a sneak, and I don't like to have you talking with him alone,"
Dick cries, quite in the tone of the Benedict who has passed the
marriage-portal and feels safe to make his will known.

"I should like to know what right you have to order what I shall or shall not do?" Rosa protests, half angry, half laughing. "Why, you talk like a grown man—like a husband. How dare you?"

Dick pauses confused, and looks guiltily about at this.

"Ah, if you put it that way I have no right except this: My whole heart is yours. You know that. You may not have given me all yours." (Protesting shrug from Rosa's shoulders.) "Well, all the same; if my heart is all your own you have a duty in the case. You ought to spare your own property from pain." (Rosa laughs softly.) "Of course you are right. You are always right. How could such a beautiful being be wrong!" The artful rogue slips his arm about her waist at this, and, after a feeble struggle, he is permitted to hold this outwork unprotested.

"And, Rosa, if I speak like a man, it is because I am a man. Wasn't it the part of maids in the old times to inspire the arm of their sweethearts; to make them constant in danger, brave in battle, and patient in defeat? Are you less than any of the damsels we read of in chivalry? Am I not a man when I look in your dear eyes and see nothing worldlier than love, nothing earthlier than truth there?"

"What a blarney you are! I must really get Vint to send you away, or he will have a Yankee brother-in-law."

"And the Perleys will have a rebel at the head of the house."

Now, this silly prattle had been carried on in the arbor near the library, and Wesley, sitting under the curtain, had heard every word of it. Neither the words nor the unmistakable sounds that lips meeting lips make, which followed, served to soothe his angry discontent. This was early on the great Davis gala day, and thereafter he disappeared from the scene. He made one of the party to Williamsburg, and, though distraught in the conversation, was keenly alert to all he saw.

Rallied upon his reticence, he had snubbed Kate and turned disdainfully from Jack's polite proffers to guide him through the review. He had studied Davis all through the manoeuvres with a furtive, fascinated attention, which Mrs. Atterbury remarked with complacency, attributing it to awe. At the dinner-table, seated between Kate and Merry, he had never taken his eye from the chief of the Confederacy. Twice the President, courteously addressing him, he had blushed guiltily and dropped his gaze. Before the dinner was half over he pleaded a severe headache, and, bidding his hostess good-night, hurried from the room. The wide hall was deserted; the moon threw broad swaths of light on the cool matting, and he halted for an instant, breathing rapidly. Something lying on the rug at the door moved languidly. Wesley, looking carefully about, moved swiftly to the spot and stopped. Pizarro raised his head, whining amicably, and, as Wesley bent over to pat him, wagged his tail with a spasmodic thud against the floor, in sign of goodfellowship.

"Come, Pizarro, come with me," Wesley said, coaxingly. But the dog, redoubling the tattoo with his tail, remained obstinately at his post. Wesley stole to the end of the hall and listened, then, hearing the busy clamor of the servants moving from the kitchen to the dining-room, he retraced his steps to the stairs, bounded lightly up and in three minutes reappeared, and, keeping his eyes on the half-closed doors, slipped softly to Pizarro. The dog sniffed excitedly, and as Wesley took a thick parcel from his coat-pocket the beast leaped up and attempted to seize it.

"Follow me, Pizarro, and you shall have it." He held up the packet, a red, glistening slice of raw beef. The dog whined ecstatically and Wesley, holding a morsel of it just out of his reach, retreated up the stairs. Pizarro bounded after him as if construing the by-play into a challenge, and frisking in all sorts of fantastic shapes to win the savory prize. The door of Wesley's room was open, and as the dog came abreast of it he flung a piece into the apartment. Pizarro, lowering his sniffing nose, looked at the tempting bit sidewise, and then wagging his tail in modest deprecation of his boldness, made a start inward. It was swallowed in an instant, and then, as Wesley entered, the door was closed. Pizarro, by the humility of his manner, the lowered head and sidelong glance, asked pardon for intruding upon the privacy of a guest, but argued with his ears and by short yelps, in extenuation, that such a feast as a bit of meat—after an active day, when the servants had forgotten to feed him—no dog with a healthy appetite could resist, no matter how perfect his breeding. He was ready for the larger ration Wesley held in his hand.

Wesley held the temptation in his hand until he had lured the dog into a large closet communicating with the bedroom by a locked door. Once in, the door was shut, and the young man sank on a seat in a thrill of grateful relief.

"That danger's over," he muttered. "Now to see who is in the upper rooms."

Perfect silence on the upper floor; only the solemn shadows of the night, as the moon rises higher and higher, and the plaintive cries of the night-birds alone betoken life. Through the windows the white-jacketed house-servants are rushing gayly to and from the dining-room. All the rooms are dimly lighted. The President's apartment is fragrant with blossoms, and the lace counterpane turned down. Retracing his steps, Wesley enters Vincent's room on the corridor with his own. The candle is burning dimly on the mantel. He seems to know his whereabouts very well for he makes straight for a bureau between the bed and the window. He takes from the top drawer a pistol-case, which he has evidently handled before, as he touches the spring at once. He takes out one pistol, and, rapidly extracting the loads, puts it back. He has taken four out of the five barrels of the second when a sound of footsteps in the hall startles him. He has barely time to replace the weapons, close the case, put it in the drawer and crawl under the bed, when Vincent and Jack enter.

His suspense and terror are so overmastering that he can only hear an occasional word. His own heart-beats sound in his ears like the thumping of a paddle. Is Vincent going to bed? Are Jack and he going to sit and smoke, as they often do? No, relief beyond words, they are going out! Perhaps to Jack's room? They often sit there until very late, and then Vincent slips in stocking-feet to his own room. But they are gone, and he must fly. He dares not return to extract the last charge. But one ball can't do much hurt in the dark, and, if his plans are carried out with care, there will be no chance for any one to use the weapons on the rescuing party, even if he were disposed to. In a moment Wesley is back in his room, marking, with surprise, that there is no sound from Jack's or Dick's room. But all is well. He is in his own room and secure from surprise.

He sat down to think. He must keep everything in mind. One whippoorwill cry from outside would mean that all was well; two that he must hurry to the rendezvous. It seemed like a dream. Davis, the arch-rebel, the chief architect of the Confederacy, under the same roof; in an hour, if no hitch come, the traitor would be bound and flying in trusty Union hands. And when they got North?—when he, Wesley Boone, handed over to the authorities in Washington this hateful chief of a hateful cause, what fame would be his! No one could dispute it. He had informed Butler's agent; he had watched day and night; had given the Unionists plans of the grounds; was now periling his own rescue to bring the arch-traitor to his doom. Ah! what in all history would compare with this glorious daring? He sat glowing in dreams of such delicious, roseate delight, that he took no heed of time, and was startled when he heard Dick and Jack bidding each other good-night. Then in a few minutes be heard Jack's door open and a tap at Dick's door.

"Come to my room. I want to show you a present I got to-night." Then silence. Wesley had no watch. The rebels had relieved him of that at Bull Run. But it must be quite midnight. He opened one of the windows softly. Oh, the glory of the night, harbinger of his high emprise, his deathless glory! The wondrous, wondrous stillness of the scene—and to think that over yonder, in the dark depths of the forest, fifty, perhaps a hundred, men were waiting for him—for him? Yes, the mighty arms of the Union were about him; the trump of a fame, such as no song had ever sung, was poised to blow to the world his daring. Hark! Heavens, yes; the long, tender plaint of the whippoorwill. Ah! now, now there was no doubt. In swooning delight he waits. Good Heaven! What's that sound? Angels and ministers of grace, the dead in wailing woe over the deed about to be done? Ah! he breathes.

Pizarro has grown tired of imprisonment and has set up an expostulatory wail, facetiously impatient at first, but now breaking into sharp yelps. This will never do. He must stop that ear-splitting outcry, or the househould will be awakened. That sharp-eyed, razor tongued young devil, Dick, is just across the hall. Wesley opens the closet door, and Pizarro bounds out, licking his jailer's hands in grateful acknowledgment. He frisks, appealing to the room door, inviting the further favor of being permitted to go to his post, his wagging tail explaining how necessary it is that a dog intrusted with such important duties as the guardianship of the household can not suffer the casual claims of friendlessness or the comity of surreptitious feeding to lure him into infidelity. The tail proving ineffectual in argument, Pizarro supplemented its eloquence by sharp admonitory yelps, tempered by a sharp crescendo whining, of which he seemed rather proud as an accomplishment.

"Damn the brute! He will ruin everything. I must kill him." But how? He had no weapon. He looked about the room in gasping terror—the dog accepting the move as a sign that the eloquence of the tail argument had proved overpowering, supplemented this by an explosion of ecstatic yelps of a deep, bass volume, that murdered the deep silence of the night, like salvos of pistols. The curtains to the windows were held in place by stout dimity bands. Whispering soothingly to the dog, Wesley knotted four of these together, and, making as if to open the door, slipped the bands like a lasso over the head of the unsuspecting brute. In an instant his howls were silenced. The dog, with protruding tongue and eyes—that had the piteous pleading and reproach of the human, looked up at him, bloodshot and failing. But now the second signal must be near! He may have missed it in the infernal howling of the brute. Yes, that was it. He looks out of the window; his room is in view of the covered way to the kitchen. He sees moving figures; he hears voices. They are there. He has missed the signal; he must hasten to them. He puts out the lights and opens the door cautiously. All is invitingly, reassuringly still. He is at the hall door in a minute, in another he is with the shadows in the rear of the house.

"Jones, is it you?"

"Ah, captain, we are waiting for ropes to secure the prize."

"There is no time to wait. The dog has made such a noise that I didn't hear your signal. I saw you from my window. Come, we must not lose a minute, for I couldn't fasten the brute very well. Davis is here, and we have only to take him from his room. The cavalry went about eleven; I heard them march away an hour ago."

"Now, give me the exact situation here, that there may be no surprise.
How many men are we likely to encounter in the event of a fracas?"

"Counting Davis and Lee, four in the house. How near the orderlies and guards are you know better than I. Besides Davis, there's Jack Sprague, young Atterbury, and Dick—but he don't count."

"No! Why?"

"He is not over his wound, and besides he's but a boy. They had two pistols loaded, but I managed to draw all the charges except one. So that if Jack and Atterbury should come to the rescue they could do no damage."

"They sleep at this end of the house?"

"Yes, and our work is at the other."

"Well, then, in that case I will get ladders I saw near the carriage-house and put them up to Davis's window as a means of escape in case these young men get after us before we finish the job. Even with their unloaded pistols, two full grown men and the boy could make trouble."

He called Number Two and gave him orders to place a ladder at each of the two windows of Davis's room, and to have a man at the top of each—armed. When the men had hurried away, Jones continued:

"Here's a pistol for you. It is a six-shooter bull-dog, and will do sure work. Now move on to the stairway; others will join us in a moment. You're sure you know Davis's room? It would be mighty awkward to poke into any of the others."

"Yes; everybody in the house was taken to see it. It is the old lady's room, occupied by mother and daughter, generally; but given up to the President for the night."

They are in the hall, stealing softly over the thick matting; they are in the broad corridor—running the whole length of the house—Jack's, Olympiads, Dick's, and Kate's rooms all behind them—southward. Wesley, with Jones touching his right arm and Number Two at his left, is moving slowly, silently northward to the left of the stairs.

"Great God! What was that?"

A sound as of a clattering troop of cavalry, the neighing of horses in the grounds! Wesley halted, trembling, dismayed.

"That's all right," Jones whispered, "I ordered the stables opened so that the horses wouldn't be handy, if any one should happen to be at hand who felt like pursuing us, or going for the cavalry."

"It was a mistake; the horses will arouse the house. We must hurry."

In a moment they were before the door of the Davis room. Wesley raised the latch. It was an old-fashioned fastening. Number Two was directed to stand at the threshold while Wesley and Jones secured Davis.

Now they are in the room. There is no sound; but from the open window, looking upon the carriage-road, there is the tramping of horses, drowning all sounds in the room. They are nearly to the large canopied bed between the open windows, when Jones, who is nearest, discovers a startled apparition half rising from the bed. He is discovered by the figure at the same instant, and a piercing scream, so loud, prolonged, and ear-splitting that it echoes over the house, ends the wild dream of the marauders. Wesley reels in panic. But Jones is an old campaigner. If he can't have victory, there must be no recapture. He rushes at the white figure, and snatches—Rosa, limp, nerveless, and swooning!

"See who's in the bed!—I'm damned if you haven't brought us to the wrong room—see, quick!"

But there was no necessity for seeing. Mrs. Atterbury uttered a stifled cry: "Help! help! murder!"

"You, Boone, know the place; stand by me and I'll see that we are not nabbed; but you've made a nice mess of the affair."

But the comments of the indignant Jones were suddenly drowned in a blood-curdling sound in the doorway: the savage, suppressed growl of a dog, and the responsive imprecations of Number Two. With this came the apparition of two figures, at sight of which Jones darted to the window, the two figures, Jack and Dick, following to his right and left.

"Save your powder, whoever you are. Fire at me, and you hit the young woman. I don't know who she is, but her body is my protection." Saying this, Jones coolly, determinedly retreated backward to the window; but Dick, hardly hearing, and certainly not comprehending, had come within arm's length of the two, somewhat to the left of Jones.

"Don't fear, Rosa," Dick exclaimed, between his teeth. "I can see you.
Ah, ah!" Then four reports, that sounded as one, split the air.

Rosa broke from the thick cloud of smoke as a fifth report rang out, and a scream of death went up between the bed and the door where Jack stood.

At the instant Dick spoke, Jack, in the doorway, heard an exclamation at his side. He half turned, and as he did so his eye caught the outlines of a man, with a shining something raised in the air, coming toward him from the bedside. He pointed his own pistol at the figure, there were three simultaneous reports, and the oncoming figure fell with a hoarse cry of pain. The man at Jack's back now cried:

"Get through the window; they're coming through the house!"

"It's only a dog; come on."

Then there was a sound of flying feet in the wide passage.

"Are you hurt, Rosa? Tell me—did they hit you? Speak, oh, speak!" It was Dick's voice, in a convulsive sob. Now, the boy again, that danger was gone.

Jack meanwhile had struck a match, and soon found the candles on the night-table near the bed. There was, at the same instant, the audible sound of scurrying along the passage. He ran out. The man assailed by the dog had reached the head of the stairs. As Jack got half-way down the corridor, man and dog disappeared over the balustrade. When he reached the hall the dog was inside, growling furiously, the door was closed and the man gone. Jack opened the door. Pizarro bounded out, and Jack followed. The dog stopped a moment, sniffed the ground, and made for the kitchen. A loud bark, followed by a ferocious growl, and a scream of mortal pain broke on the air; then a pistol-shot, and a long, pitiful gasp, and silence.

"Well, that dog won't trouble any one now," Jack heard, and the voice made his hair rise into bristling quills.

"Barney!" he cried; "Barney Moore, is that you?"

"It is; no one else. If I'm not drunk or dreaming, that's my own Jack.
God be praised!"

"How in Heaven's name did you get here?"

"I might ask you the same question, but you have priority of query, as they say in court. I came here first to help rescue Captain Wesley Boone, and second to capture his rebel Excellency Jeff Davis."

"O my God! my God! Barney, Barney, tell me all, and tell me quickly!"

Barney told all he knew, and told it rapidly, Jack catching his arm almost fiercely, as the miserable truth began to define itself in his whirling senses. Then the meaning of the two marauders in the ladies' apartments became plain. Jack and Barney were hurrying toward the chamber as the latter talked, Jack filled with an awful fear.